


Heat Cycles and Finals

by blueberry01120



Series: Experiments in A/(B)/O [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alpha/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art student Loki, College Football Superstar Thor, Estranged Relationships, Human Jarvis (Iron Man movies), M/M, Mpreg, Professor Bruce Banner, Pseudo-Incest, TA Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:20:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 56
Words: 30,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry01120/pseuds/blueberry01120
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki Odinson, chemical engineering-fine arts major, didn't exactly put off taking Heat 101, but now that he isn't anymore, there's this one not-brother sized problem—his... Thor is taking it too. And Thor, who really shouldn't be taking it since he's a senior but has bigger priorities like winning college football games and parading around his bombshell girlfriend, might sort of definitely be Loki's alpha not that they're advertising that really unfortunate fact. Because it is enough that he and Thor have been avoiding each other the two year overlap Loki's been at ESU, but it's hard to avoid someone in the same lecture hall.<br/>Or How Heat 101 ruins Loki's Life in 60 minutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this on and off for a while. I liked the flippant, tumblr-y voice I made for Loki, so you know, it was a fun experiment. It's not complete and probably will never be with the way things are looking IRL, but here it is!

## **

So, Loki didn’t necessarily put off taking ‘Heat 101’—‘5.101F - Biology in Relation to Human Reproduction’ officially in the course catalogue but anyone with a brain knows what that means—but the other recs for Course 10 and 20, the actual Chemical Engineering, Fine Arts-related ones, made sense to take.

He is here for a Chemical Engineering and Fine Arts degree.

At least 66%, the other third being a Bachelor in Education but that’s easy. Loki’s had the core classes, the ones he needs to, well, educate, done for two years now.

Heat 101 however is one of the few recs he has left for that, and Loki’s no procrastinator. He doesn’t want to waste his senior year in a freshman lecture—junior year is bad enough—and it kills two estral birds with one stone.

And Bruce teaches the class on paper. He has better things to do than explain to a lecture hall of freshman why a week every month they’re hornier than usual. They don’t care, and Bruce says that’s why Stark is his TA in the first place, “to do the sticky work.”

Still, it’s difficult to say the least not to glare hard at the sparkling eyes and perky faces in few months-old ESU hoodies bought after acceptance letters. They reek of suburbia among other let-me-show-you-how-free-of-Mommy-and-Daddy-I-am things.

Two years—a year and something amount of days now actually—and he’s out of here.

He checks his phone, and there’s a minute left until class starts though he could’ve sworn there was a minute left three minutes ago.

What’s worst about this is that he’ll never regain the time he’s spent listening, involuntarily, to the frat bros a row back droll on and on about how “fucking awesome, dude” that party was last night. Because Loki really needed to know how many beers the one with the Texan accent drank.

Then they stop, “Holy shit it’s him” instead of another “Dude,” and—

God _that_ smells good.

Like warm vanilla or melted chocolate—no, not edible but something from some overpriced couture perfume that’s sweet and rich but not worth half a grand—maybe worth half a grand but.

When he was pubescent, it was priceless, but it was always there, a wall away or across the dinner table because, well, they didn’t know better. They knew—of course they _knew_ that it was wrong, but short of admitting it and getting shipped off to Grandma or Grandpa or Aunt Gulveig—all titles and false pretenses; no blood—they couldn’t do anything.

Until now. Chemical Engineering, Fine Arts, and Education don’t have much overlap with Geology even though two of them are sciences. (All sciences weren’t made the same.)

Count to five, stand up, shamble out as quietly and unnoticed as possible, find Bruce and convince him to overlook him not actually being in class, and get his 12 units and General Institute rec and never have to put his ass in a seat in Heat 101 again.

A good a plan as any other Loki’s come up with.

Then there’s the smell getting stronger and in his periphery, a figure in red—because he has to wear his varsity jacket everywhere—without the perceptiveness walking past all of the seats between Loki and the nearest freshman at the end of the row and Loki’s legs forget how to stand.

He holds his breath, clenches his jaw to cage his tongue.

Peeled off the walls of every hallway on campus and Barton’s bedroom as a makeshift dartboard and the pages of old sketchbooks, Thor.

Fucking Thor. Loki doesn’t ask for much, nothing at all compared to Thor. He can’t have been that busy with his frat bro friends to text Loki—wouldn’t have even had to call—his schedule to make sure they stayed in their own lanes this one last year they have to be here together.

Thor sits right beside him—yes, that makes so much sense to do—and Loki’s mouthful of spit turns metallic.

He might finally burst into flames like Parker asks him if he’s going to when he pushes him a little too far with how much his skin and his blood and his bones literally burn, and Thor’s eyes dragging all over his skin don’t cool him down at all.

“You didn’t tell me you had this class.”

Because Loki’s the older “brother” and it’s his responsibility, right?

Loki focuses on the blank projector screen in front of the class instead of how… good he smells. Or how shitty he still is at parting his hair in half—only in _half_ —and plaiting.

He’s lucky that he could be bald and still look… like he does.

“We don’t exactly talk that much,” he replies. “And I didn’t think it’d be a risk since you’re a senior and this is a freshman class.”

It might be a dig at, you know, Thor getting extensions on “no exceptions” projects to his heart’s content and acing classes he could barely pass without a little assistance. Loki doesn’t need them, but all that stuff their mom and dad said about integrity and fairness.

“Senior year’s my gap year. Everyone saves the general recs for their last year. Everyone who wants to enjoy their time at college.”

“Throwing a ball and calling myself ‘Viking God,’ really enjoyable.”

“Hell yeah it is.” Thor’s arm drops on the back of his chair, and Thor’s just next to him, but breathing in air fucked filled with his scent and keeping his eyes open with Thor as yellow and blue as ever in his periphery and almost touching him, it’s like he’s everywhere.

Everywhere, taking up too much space, and he really hasn’t missed this at all.

Really hasn’t.

There’s a whistle.

Stark’s finally shown up (and given Loki inspiration to try to ignore Thor.) “So, if you could all shut your mouths, I’d appreciate that. Thanks.” He chugs his coffee, that shitty excuse of a five o’clock shadow on full display, and instead of getting this hour of torture that Loki’s going to have to endure started, he holds it out and in full power-trip mode, tells the freshman sitting there to throw it away “will ya.”

Loki makes the mistake of breathing in and then looking over. Thor’s looking over too, and they’re looking—no, staring at each other.

Thor’s pupils are big, and Loki knows his are too.

Thor looks away, and thank god, Loki can too now.

“I’m Tony Stark. You can call me Master Stark if that’s your deal. No misters though. Haven’t found a gray in my head since I was 15.” He grins and claps his hands together, and Loki exhales slowly. Like that wasn’t only four years ago. “Welcome to Heat 101 or ‘We’re Complete Fucking Animals and Here’s Why for Dummies’ as I like to call it”

Which is why it’s really funny that Loki spends the time Stark wastes BS’ing through the syllabus shifting in his seat a thousand times because he can’t get too close to that arm that Thor hasn’t moved and seems to be getting lower and lower or too far from Thor because, well, he can’t make it obvious that he’s trying really hard not to—to get away from him. And the funniest of all, he doesn’t pay attention to Stark, the one he should be paying attention to, but to Thor’s forever vibrating and blinking phone because he somehow cares to know who Thor’s texting like it matters to him.

Can it really get more animalistic?

Stark says that he’ll see them on Wednesday, and almost— _almost_ —he thinks about being away from Thor for a day as something… bad. A day… a day isn’t enough. It’s way too little time, and there’s nothing bad about it meaning he won’t have to see Thor.

Loki likes—no loves not seeing Thor.

“And class dismissed.”

So much that he only looks at Thor for a few seconds for some reason, like Thor does him, but they don’t exchange byes or pretend that they’re actually looking forward to Wednesday.

Loki walks away first.


	2. Chapter 2

## **

“Way to start the year right?” Stark’s holding his lapels and smiling, and Loki isn’t in the mood to smile back. “All of these freshmen have just found their favorite professor, and I’m not actually one. Maybe you too. Never too late.”

“And maybe you’ll grow two or three inches and finally your ‘I’m 5’8.5’ won’t be a lie. We can all dream.”

“’Oh, what homework, Odinson? You said you lost it? Oh, man, sorry, but I’m going to have to give you a zero. You know the rules.’ Seriously, we can be friends or enemies in these halls. Your choice. Choose wisely.”

“Like Bruce would let you screw me over.” An inside joke only him and Bruce would get. “Speaking of Bruce, where is he?”

Stark’s eyebrows are a line of bushy hairs for a second. “Uh, yeah, but it’s sort of the point of a TA to keep rude, overly tall guys away from the boss,” he says, face relaxing. “Banner’s in his office. Don’t tell him I told you.” Stark’s shouting after him. “He’ll believe you cut a swathe with the power of your craziness.”

Craziness or not, he gets through the annoying people crowding the hallways to Banner’s door fast, almost record time, but record time was different circumstances. Heat-related circumstances.

He knocks once, and Bruce is telling him to come in. He shuts the door behind him, and Bruce’s looking up from all of the papers on his desk, pushing his glasses up so they’re not dangling off his face anymore. Bruce getting serious.

“Yes, Loki?” But he can’t be serious with Loki. He takes them off. “I trust Tony wasn’t too bad?”

“Stark was alright,” he says, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear and biting his bottom lip a little because Bruce likes that. “You wouldn’t have chosen him if he wouldn’t be. So, it’s not because of him that we need to work out some kind of arrangement where I’m still in the class but not present in the class.”

Bruce squints, looking slightly amused. “Schrödinger’s student?”

Thor wouldn’t get that reference.

Not that what Thor does or doesn’t get matters. They’re not actually brothers or anything.

“Yes, except you know exactly where I am. Not in Heat 101. But I’m on the roster and turn in work like I am.”

Bruce has his sleeves rolled down just above his elbows, and his arms flex—god, that hair, dark and thick like the ones on his head, it’s soft rubbing against Loki’s cheek when he’s covered in sweat and his skin’s buzzing—as he puts his hands under his chin. “Why?”

There was no way Bruce wasn’t going to ask him that, so Loki gives Bruce an answer, the answer, that he’ll understand, “My adoptive brother is in the class.”

It’s somewhat funny that Bruce looks surprised about that since it’s ‘Dr. R. Bruce Banner’ on Loki—and Thor’s—schedule. He presses a hand to his face, and more and more him saying, “I’m here for the research opportunities,” is obvious. “Oh, I… must’ve forgotten,” he says and sighs like Loki should’ve by now. “You’re still on suppressants, right?”

3:30 on the dot daily.

“I am, but.” He inhales, and there are traces of Bruce that Bruce’s suppressants can’t, well, suppress, and they’re rich and dark, and he shudders as it diffuses through his blood. “Suppressants can only do so much.”

Alluding to it, what Loki thought he’d avoid with Thor being interested in fratty things Loki cannot care less about, really makes him want to throw up his espresso and cinnamon bagel on Bruce’s floor. His other bodily fluids have been there, so.

“You could take it next year.”

And let Thor get his way? Loki almost went to Yale because of him and, “Oh, Dad, Loki would be perfect there even though Empire State University has the best Chemistry program in the world.”  

“No.” He clenches his fists and really wishes his nails were longer. “I’ll be fine.”   

“You will be.” Bruce’s putting his glasses back on, and definitely trying to convince himself not to change his mind and give Loki leeway because Loki isn’t Thor asking for a redo on a test he failed because he just had to celebrate partying with the bros.

But Loki doesn’t really want his sympathy, so he tells Bruce he’ll see him later (or when he gets antsy and wet and hard and his hands aren’t enough.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sufjan Stevens, if you haven't heard of 'em, look into him. Start with Illinois. It's GOAT. Then embrace it. Anyway, this Loki loves him, so if you wanna vibe. You can vibe.

## **

Loki doesn’t feel paid nearly enough for his internship to listen to Stark complain loudly that he hasn’t screwed anyone in a week. By the end of his shift, he has a nice long letter to Howard Stark quoting his son’s need “for some warm hole ASAP” and Loki’s demands in exchange for not going to _People_ or the _Wall Street Journal_ composed in his head, but Stark pulls off his lab goggles, looking roguish, and says they’re going out to drink, and Stark’s actually funny when Loki’s had a few, so the letter gets put on hold and Loki doesn’t tell Stark to go screw himself.

Stark flashes his shiny ‘Stark Industries’ corporate card, and they don’t have to produce their fake ID’s. Not for the first drink or the ‘whatever-th,’ probably around the four to eight range, but Loki can’t be expected to keep tally when it’s his goal not to get drunk for the sake of it but to get drunk so that blond guy he can’t even smell doesn’t remind him of anyone.

Stark’s arm’s too soft and small, not solid enough around Loki’s shoulder as Loki drags Stark back along to campus, and his voice has gotten lower since Loki’s freshman year and Stark was practically squeaking and even shorter, but that “ _You didn’t tell me you had this class_ ” is a far deeper voice repeats over Stark’s rambling.

A few isn’t a few at all when Loki wakes up in his room in last night’s clothes and a headache that makes his brain scream at any kind of light brighter than darkness, so it’s really common sense that the time to go to Heat 101 comes and goes and he’s still cocooned under his blanket.

He feels like a zombie surfacing to feed himself. At least a zombie that doesn’t have to deal with _him_ today.

“Didn’t know you to skip class,” Barton says as Loki’s eating his Toasted Oats and cringing at the jolt that goes up his jaw each time he bites down. He drops his germy, ugly backpack on the table because he knows Loki can’t throw it at him without hurting something. “Thought you were one of the few actually here for an education.”

“You don’t know a lot about me, Barton.” He chews slowly and stares Barton down as he starts looking through the cabinets with his unwashed hands, but Natasha’s not hungover and her grip on Barton’s leash is nice and tight.

“Hands, Clint.” She puts Barton’s backpack on the ground. She knows the dirty places it’s been. “You don’t know who touched the subway railings before you.”

“Hey, not all of us have tall sexy men to lean on when the suits take all the seats.”

“Being able to reach the railing doesn’t make you tall.”

Loki pushes away from the counter and sets his bowl in the sink. “Yes, Natasha might be short, but don’t be delusional and think that makes you tall,” he says, smirking at the affronted sound Barton makes.

“Getting real sick of your heightism. Your family’s giants because you’re all terrible people.”

His “family” are a bunch of fucking liars who happen to be tall too. His—Odin and Thor are taller than him anyway. Blonder and tanner and actually related through blood.

Barton starts talking about the things he and Natasha can do because they’re both close in size, and Loki still has enough of a headache and doesn’t want to stick around long enough for Natasha to start scenting Clint because she’s somehow turned on by the idiot.

Loki would’ve chosen someone smarter for his mate.

(But it’s not really a choice and he didn’t.)


	4. Chapter 4

## **

For the half he pays in rent out of his leftover scholarship money—something his—the people who raised him have never given him enough credit for because it wasn’t football or Odin’s old family friend that just happened to have a scholarship lying around that got him them but actually using his brain—his room is his living space. It smells like him and maybe Parker in some places, but first moving in, away from his old room where it barely smelled like him and he was naïve and liked it that way, it was a reality check.

He was… annoyed, incredibly annoyed at it, but the sterility was the kind of masochistic push he needed.

Heat 101 won’t set him back two long years.

Bruce looks like he’s expecting him.

Loki hangs up his coat as Bruce leans on the wall and watches, so he bends over nice and slow to slip his trainers off. He’s never too hungover to pull on skinny jeans if it means that Bruce’s licking his lips when Loki stands back up.

“Have you also come to tell me you’re dropping the class after all?”

“No, I’m here to get your lesson plan out of you too.” He sinks onto the couch, and it and all the furniture smell more like Bruce than Bruce does. Most of the time. He leans on his arm and gives Bruce a sly smile. “Don’t worry. You won’t be ruining my transcript with a W.”

Bruce slides his hands into his pockets, and tweed doesn’t do much to hide the line of Bruce’s cock down his thigh. “I wouldn’t do that,” he says, and people wrongly assume that Bruce is the quiet, unassuming geek, but they don’t know this look in his eyes, fresh acrylic emerald green so they almost glow and dots of black.

It’s thrilling.

“I thought favoritism was below you.”

He tucks his legs underneath him as Bruce comes, the anticipation making him slick and hard against the zipper of his jeans because underwear would just get in the way.

Bruce’s hands are heavy on the curves of his neck, his thumbs pressing where Loki knows his pulse is racing, and Loki inhales through his nose, and god Bruce smells so good (but not amazing _he_ smells amazing.) His nose brushes Loki’s cheek and his jaw and his neck, and Loki has to shut his eyes as Bruce takes a deep breath of him and says, “Stop me now before I can’t.”

He doesn’t, and doesn’t try to when Bruce’s sucking him down and fucking him open with fingers that feel too big ( _his_ were) and gripping him around the base tight and replacing those fingers with his cock, eyes swirls of black lacquer and lips swollen and slick with Loki’s wet and pre-cum, and basically tears him in half as always and fills him over and over until the burn’s too much and Loki’s begging him to cum, to make him cum, and Bruce’s three fingers fuck into him in time to the hard slap of his thighs against Loki’s ass.

Bruce cums on his stomach, on Loki’s cock, and Loki bites his lip through and cums around Bruce’s hand, around the emptiness Bruce left in his ass, and it’s not Bruce’s name he almost shouts but doesn’t because Bruce’s mouth is on his, suffocating him.

He’s never left Bruce’s so…disappointed, and it’s disappointing since he came extremely hard (and he knows it wasn’t the sex but with who that’s the problem, a problem Loki didn’t have before Monday and Heat 101 and _him_ , which really pisses him off.)

He sketches so hard his fresh stick of charcoal’s a nub when he’s done.


	5. Chapter 5

## **

Parker comes back to his apartment because Mrs. Parker says he’s moping over Gwen Stacy and needs to be social which Parker says is just “Aunt May being a worrier” like she isn’t completely right. He says this while sulking at his worn trainers, whites, white mixed with daubs of brown, but he wouldn’t be if Bruce weren’t on suppressants and he could smell why Loki isn’t in the mood for touching.

He’d probably make a scene and try to lecture Loki on how many rules they’re breaking because Parker is a hopeless romantic and very naive. But a civilized animal and hangs up his jacket and sets his backpack on the ground in Loki’s room, not desk or freaking bed but ground, proving that he’d be the roommate Clint Barton will never be.

“So, how’s Heat 101 taught by the notorious master of all trades Tony Stark?”

Loki grabs his book for his lit class, and Parker’s lying on his bed with his Biochem book on his chest and his arms behind his head. Loki’s pillow is going to smell like Parker’s shampoo he uses only because it smells like “ _freaking apples, man. Apples in shampoo form_.” “It’s exactly what you’re imagining except Stark is still a complete dork.”

He’s only gone once, but Stark was still a dork the last time Loki checked. Loki grasps almost everything, but the long line of people seeking out nerdy, teenaged Stark to fuck, Loki won’t ever understand.

“Would’ve been cool if he taught last year, so I had him. But Dr. B is like the smartest guy alive, and he’s got some good jokes,” Parker says, and Loki nods and gives Parker a little direction away from the topic of Bruce because the bruises on the back of Loki’s thighs are still fresh.

Parker takes a picture of him as he’s lying on the edge of the bed reading, and compliments him in his roundabout way, “Consistently my most gorgeous subject,” and Loki rolls his eyes since Parker’s forgotten how to warn Loki before he blinds him. As Parker smiles at him and labels the Polaroid, saying, “Terry Richardson watch out. There’s a new guy in town,” it’s annoying that for a second, it’s not Parker’s choppy brown hair and baby deer eyes he’s giving the stink eye but blond hair—an impasto of brass, beige, bits of golden rod—long but not like Loki’s and squinty blue eyes instead.

He hasn’t gone into work so tetchy since Thor’s girlfriend showed up in Thor’s varsity jacket and got a Frappuccino made “just like Starbucks and non-fat” because she wanted to get to know her “future brother-in-law.”  

They don’t serve Frappuccinos, but Loki made her one with whole fat milk and white sugar. She didn’t know the difference anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

## **

“You owe me,” Stark tells him as they’re walking out of one of the sterile labs. The supervising researcher didn’t care that Stark is _that_ Stark and told him to shut up or get out when Tony kept whispering, “Loki.” A hero in his own right really. “Twice, I’ve compromised my integrity to mark you as here when I called your name, and guess what, you weren’t. Banner’s too focused on reaching nirvana because he just said, ‘Okay, Tony’ when I told him. Didn’t even blink.”

Loki did tell Bruce his plan, and Bruce didn’t agree out loud. But Loki’s gone through with it and not stepped foot in Heat 101 since last Monday. He’s got notes and the next two weeks of lesson plans from Bruce. He doesn’t have any absences then either, so.

He presses the down button for the elevator. “Like the boy who sells midterms and finals for a grand to get some ‘under the table money’ ever had any integrity.”

“What can I say? Industriousness runs in my veins. And I’m a hero. No, vigilante. Those kids have futures because out of the kindness of my own heart and wallet, I gave them a freebie.”

“It’s not called a freebie if you pay a $1,000 for it,” he says, and Stark replies with an unnecessarily proud shrug, “Money isn’t the only way to pay.”

When Loki heard the stories of predatory alphas Frigga told him, it wasn’t Tony Stark that came to mind. They were taller for one and didn’t think sex jokes were the peak of comedy.

Stark pushes his douchey Wayfarer Ray Bans up his scrunched up nose as Loki flags down a cab, twirling the keys to his overpriced toy car. “If your ass isn’t in class Monday, Odinson,” he’s saying as Loki opens the cab door, “you won’t have a vigilante to mark you here.”

Like that won’t only happen if Mrs. Stark herself finds out and disapproves even though the few times Loki’s met her, she was sarcastic and exasperated like Stark’s dad, so that’s unlikely.

Barton texts him when he’s by Clinton. And it’s sadly not a rare occasion, but Loki still sighs when he opens it. _‘UR DOUCHEBAG BROTHER IS HERE. HURRY TF UP.’_


	7. Chapter 7

## **

Loki’s not run up four flights of stairs so fast since Barton the asshole called him while he was walking home from class and told him he was going to use Loki’s laptop—yeah, told him not asked—because his was mysteriously fried by a bottle of Bacardi and Loki was thankfully only on Grand Street. Barton never got to his laptop or into his room.

Barton’s standing in the doorway and looking pissed. “Nice of you to give me some warning.”

 _That_ smell, Loki’s knees almost buckle at the threshold, but he pushes past Barton instead and deep into Thor’s smell which has somehow everywhere, and not a lot of time has passed since Barton’s panicked text and Loki getting here.

Loki doesn’t even bother with taking his trainers off in case he needs to run (like he could outrun Thor.)

“So, how soon can you get rid of him?” Barton asks, following Loki but stopping at the end of the hallway.

Loki’s door is cracked open. He closes it before he leaves. Every single time.

“I guess we’ll see,” he says, lower than he intends but Thor is smothering him really and Loki’s an animal. He won’t ever admit it aloud because Bruce would somehow find out and talk to Loki about how he’s so much smarter and better than that and all of these things that Loki already knows.   

And two years right in the trash. His room barely smells like him now. It’s all Thor, and Thor looks really happy about that—he would be—as he’s resting his ass on Loki’s desk, his varsity jacket never far and just thrown on Loki’s bed.

He has clothes on, sweatpants that don’t hide anything and a red baseball tee from his never-ending supply of them, which is… good.

“I got you notes from the last two classes you skipped,” he says and holds up a packet, “but I saw you already had them and the homework too. Tony didn’t think it was important to tell me that when I asked for your work.”

“I went to the professor,” Loki says. “I’ve had him before.”

Thor squints and smiles, so it’s predictable, “And I’m the one getting special treatment,” is what comes out of his mouth. Then he pushes off Loki’s desk, and Loki hasn’t taken more than a step into his room, so there’s no step back to take. “It smells a lot better in here than it did when I came in. You smell fine, but that other alpha reeked. Don’t know how you stood it.”

“Well, he doesn’t reek to me,” he says, and Thor’s not all that amused anymore. Which is why he said it and because Parker does smell fine, not amazing, but.

“Who is he? Some film studies major hipster you hang out with?”

“No, he’s actually Biophysics and Biochem.” Loki tries to smile in a told-you-so way, but he has to keep breathing too, and Thor’s making that hard. “He’s incredibly smart, but he likes Sleater-Kinney too, so yes, a hipster.”  

Thor crosses his arms so his sleeves look ready to rip, but they, um, thankfully don’t. “I can’t believe you’re on suppressants. What would Mom and Dad think about you hiding yourself?”

“I don’t care what your parents think about me being responsible,” he says, and Thor scoffs and says, all pissed off, “Our parents,” like that makes it any less a lie. “They can’t dictate what I do and don’t do because I’m supporting myself, and if I want to take suppressants, I can.”

Especially since not taking them means going into heat and he’s had one heat too many of fingers and vibrators and other alphas that end up disappointing and miserable because he can’t _cum_ -cum.

Only _he_ can make him do that.

Thor’s starting to pull his shirt off, and beside the posters around campus of him at practice or whatever, it’s been years since he’s seen Thor shirtless.

Years since he… (traced the lines between his abs with his tongue sort of like a maze down.)

The door’s shut, and Loki’s not a step away from the hall anymore but really close to Thor and taking off his jacket and shirt because his skin’s suddenly burning. He gives them to Thor and takes Thor’s shirt, and he looks down at his trainers as Thor brings them to his nose and inhales them, smelling Loki like Loki smells Thor somehow even more when he puts the shirt on.

It’s way too big because Thor’s big, outrageously big.

Thor’s staring. “You can’t take suppressants anymore. I can barely smell you, and it’s messing with my head.” He sighs and grabs his jacket. “I understand why and know that it’s fucking hard. I barely get by, but sports and stuff helps me. I just need you to do this for me because I really want this last year to be easy for both of us.”

Thor’s three years have been perfect, so he can’t pretend this will make him or break him.

“You have a game tonight, right?” Loki asks. “First one of the season.”

“Yeah.” Thor zips up his jacket and smiles. “You’re going to watch?”

“No, I don’t want to sit and listen to Barton scream how much he thinks you’re a stupid douchebag at the TV.”

“I’m not stupid,” Thor says, opening the door, and he stops to say, “I’ll see you in class Monday,” with this lopsided smile and wink Loki rolls his eyes at but still sees in his head when he’s putting on his headphones because Barton’s going to start screaming soon.

Still wearing Thor’s shirt because the cotton is soft.

When he gets out of the shower—Barton’s still screaming at the TV down the hall because Natasha’s too sadistic to shut him up—his skin smells even more of Thor like his anti-scent body wash amplified it. But he smells amazing so Loki doesn’t run to Bath & Body works or anything.


	8. Chapter 8

## **

Natasha, Barton, and some guy Natasha says, not even looking up from her book, is her friend “James” and Barton tacks on, “He’s from Russia too,” are sitting at the dining table they always told Loki had too many chairs like Loki isn’t a dozen steps ahead and they don’t invite people over for shitty two dollar takeout, of course, without even telling Loki until he’s walking in and Steve Rogers is sitting in his chair, the one Barton doesn’t dirty with his ass because Natasha was pitying enough to forbid him from it.

James from Russia is looking at Loki like he might rip his heart clean out of his chest or slam him into the table and fuck him to death, but he’s not sitting in Loki’s chair. His mouth—these pouty lips that are just two strokes of pink and a pale gray mixed in for that depth—curves into something not quite a smile, cocky and not at all shy about that.

Natasha whispers something in Barton’s ear that makes him pour the rest of his cereal down his throat, and Natasha’s already starting to scent Barton’s back when they drag each other out of the kitchen but the door slams down the hall, Loki free from any early morning eyefuls and left with James from Russia.

“Barton was talking out of his ass again.” He sounds, actually, straight out of Brooklyn instead of Moscow. And that clef in his chin. God, a swipe of darker value, gray and flesh. The same color dusting the sharp angle of his jaw. _Yes_. “It’s Bucky, and I was born in Russia, but I’m not from Russia. I was in an American for nine months and was raised by one.”

That person deserves a medal for birthing this marvel of a man.

“When isn’t he,” Loki says. “You don’t scream freshman to me and look old enough to not get carded. I’m guessing grad student then?”

He makes an impressed face. Short, diagonal hatches cresting up and down, curving just barely on his brow. “Got it. You look pretty young.”

“I’m a junior,” he says. “Just shy of the drinking age.”

And Loki’s only dabbled in poetry, but that’s just what he wants to do to Bucky, drink him in and burn the deep set of his eyes, the smudges of brown-black his nostrils are at the underside of his Roman nose, the brown clumps of hair falling onto his forehead, sun-bleached at the ends. 

Bucky’s noticed that he’s staring, barely there creases on that forehead. “You alright?”

“Yes.” He grins for a second and leans forward on his elbows, toward Bucky. “I’m trying to remember what you look like in case you don’t want to be my personal muse.”

A little bit of teeth between those pouty lips, off-white, perfect. “Romanoff did mention you were an art kid.” He blinks. His eyelashes, dark, quick, thick strokes. He sighs. “Mona Lisa didn’t get world famous by saying no to Da Vinci. So, where am I posing for you?”

“You’re perfect here,” he says and the way Bucky lifts his eyebrows—Loki runs for his sketchbook.

Bucky’s an alpha, and compared to Thor—well, there isn’t any comparison to Thor, but he smells kind of good in addition to being stunning.


	9. Chapter 9

## **

He asks a freshman in dudebro uniform—fraternity hoodie, those very ugly Adidas sandals, and white socks—if he can have his seat with this smile that’s just a little curve of his lips and his hair tucked behind his ear to show off his neck, and pretty easily, he gets a front row seat in Heat 101.

A minute before class starts, Thor comes in, which Loki shouldn’t be able to smell at all. He’s already drowning in Thor because obviously Thor scented his entire wardrobe, and Loki’s body wash has done a shit job at removing what Thor’s shirt rubbed on him Friday night. But he does even though Thor’s what a dozen rows behind him.

Stark’s honestly the most annoying person that’s ever lived in his shouted, “Loki Odinson, you here?” and gasp like he didn’t see Loki the second he walked into the lecture hall. “I think you’re on your way to becoming my favorite student,” he says and shouts Thor’s first name only because everyone knows when Thor is there (Loki most of all.)

It’s kind of ironic that today is ‘Scenting.’ Loki knows all about scenting, so it’s review, but Stark has a really self-deprecating view of the human race and they’re all cats and dogs to him. Bruce would probably kill him if he knew that Stark was contradicting his whole belief system, that they aren’t just like cats and dogs and are more than heats and bonding.

“Came for the Tony Stark Show I see,” Stark says as Loki’s getting up to leave, looking all too proud of himself. As usual. “Word on campus is that I’m already ahead in the race for Teacher of the Year. Too bad I’m not a teacher, but good to see the people recognize me for me.”

“The people are stupid,” he says, and he goes to ask if Bruce is in his office, but he inhales and Thor’s coming. He couldn’t just leave, and the two of them could go back to their own slightly modified paths which came close but didn’t intersect.

Stark leans in a little and sniffs and smiles, and Loki should be annoyed because they’re two years past that, but Thor’s nearer and nearer, and he’s going to beat whatever sexually suggestive shit is going to come out of Stark’s mouth.

And, well, he does, so Stark’s too smart to say it.

Thor comes close, and Loki doesn’t turn to look at him directly since his periphery is good enough to see him in his varsity jacket—and thin t-shirt under that—and bad attempt at plaits.

“Thor,” he says, automatic and not full of anything Stark might find weird, and Thor replies in an exhale, “Loki.”

Tony has his arms crossed and gives them a smile. “You know, before Thor came to me to get your work from when you were playing hooky, I never really thought about you two in the same sentence. In the same context actually. Like once when we were first starting our internship in your freshman year, but I thought you were maybe cousins until I investigated. Dumb I know. Patronymics don’t work like that.”

“Well, I’m adopted,” Loki says, and Tony’s eyebrows go right up.

Thor chastises, “Loki,” because he could never handle the truth he was always saying was the only option.

“Doesn’t change what I said. Blood does not a family make. Trust me. I know from experience. But you’re like two sides of the same coin. It makes sense that you’re brothers. Adopted or not.” Stark grins like a lunatic. “Sort of alpha and omega.”

Stark’s right, and he doesn’t even know it.

“Don’t go into comedy,” Loki tells him, crossing his arms around himself as to not do anything stupid. “You’re rich and a prodigy. I’d walk away from the table before you bust.”

It’s too late to take that back.

“Sounds like you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t know who you’ve been, uh, playing with, but I stop after I bust.” Stark then looks Loki over, an eyebrow lifted, and says, “Have I told you how good you smell?”

Thor freaking slaps his back, and Loki can’t even shrug off his hand when he leaves it there. “Might want to get familiar with the conduct code, man. Stuff like that could get you in… trouble,” he says, and he pulls at the back of Loki’s shirt, and Loki’s an animal so he can’t get as annoyed as he should. “Come on, Loki.”

Stark mumbles, something like, “Talk about a protective big brother,” behind them. One of the rare perks of this thing is Thor telling guys to back off and subtly threatening their lives if they don’t is just him being Loki’s big brother who happens to be an alpha and bigger than them. Not Loki’s alpha.

That’s something no one talks about because it doesn’t happen that they know of.

Thor’s still ruining Loki’s shirt and pulling him around, and people they pass are looking at him and thinking that he’s so great, and Loki’s so lucky. “Does he always talk to you like that?”

“Only when I’m not wearing underwear.”

That look, the be-serious-Loki-because-I-demand-answers-to-soothe-my-rage look Thor gives him will never stop being funny.

“No, Thor, he doesn’t. He’s 19 years old and went through puberty in college where he didn’t have a time like you did, so he can’t really be blamed for liking how I smell off of suppressants.” Loki gives Thor a sarcastic smile as he stops pulling him at the corner of East 8th. “We’re friends. I know, hard to believe, but I guess I have them.”

Friends has always rubbed him the wrong way as a descriptor, but whatever, it’s close enough.

“Thank you,” Thor says and smiles but without any big show of teeth. “For understanding. It’s sort of your… duty to listen, but you’ve never been good with following all the way through. So, like I said, thank you.”

“Your wish is my command,” he says, Thor letting go of his shirt, and he crosses the street and only looks over his shoulder once to see Thor still standing there and watching him go.


	10. Chapter 10

****

## **

Steve’s talking about the history of cartoon art and completely oblivious that he’s standing in the projection of Silver Age Superman who Steve could pass for if he dyed his hair black, and Wanda Maximoff, a sophomore that Barton brought into their apartment last year for greasy tacos at midnight, won’t stop whispering to her shadow of a twin brother Pietro sitting in front of them.

She’s a Visual Arts major. She doesn’t appreciate art the way Loki does—no one does except Steve actually.

Wanda taps his arm, and Loki doesn’t look away from Steve—not that Wanda is ugly, but Steve’s cute, very cute—as he gives a somewhat annoyed and quiet, “Hm?” “So, I say that Superman was—“

“—an alpha,” Pietro says, “but we all know that he was an omega. No alpha would be that merciful to genocidal maniacs. He’s omega through and through.”

“But that’s why he’s AO. The omega gene gives him compassion to balance the alpha gene. Compassion is the greatest quality of a leader, and Superman is a spectacular leader.” Wanda smiles proudly in Loki’s periphery. “I’m AO, and I bet that Steve is.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Pietro asks, haughty because the guy thinks he’s the absolute shit. Anyone who bleaches their hair cool white has to. And of course Wanda acts scandalized and says that she can’t just ask him “ _that_ , Piet.”

Wanda’s no horny co-ed making her way around the frat houses, mostly because Pietro’s an actual protective big brother and only that, but she can’t be prudish with how much cleavage she shows, which all power to her. Her body is an S curve rivalling Venus de Milo.

Steve passes around vintage comic books to study for artistry and technique, and unlike most TA’s Steve doesn’t show up hungover and bitter that he’s doing some MIA professor’s work for no credit. He’s usually smiling, and when he’s not, he’s making one of those hilarious concentrated, tongue-out-the-corner-of-the-mouth faces and drawing.

Loki’s noticed, of course, that Steve’s smile changes when he’s talking to Sam Wilson, a guy Loki’s had a few electives with and asked him during rush week in freshman year if “that Thor” was his brother—he replied yes a little bitterly, and Sam grinned and said that Thor was his “big brother” so they were like siblings. Loki hasn’t spoken more than a few words to him since—and that Steve practically runs to get close to Sam when Sam raises his hand.

Steve turns the pages to the comic book Sam’s looking at over Sam’s shoulder and talks directly into his ear. Loki’s almost an expert on inappropriate teacher-student behavior because one should know the rules before breaking them.

His, “See you Thursday,” is belated, and his goodbye smile is rushed.

“You’re right,” he tells Wanda, standing up. “They’re both AO.”

Pietro huffs and says, “Better to be half omega than full,” and Loki pushes in his chair and replies, smirking, “You don’t know the fun of being full.”

Wanda’s reprimanding Pietro when he leaves, and Steve’s kneading Sam’s shoulder.


	11. Chapter 11

## **

“You… smell like him.” There’s nothing on the paper Bruce is or was reading before he started staring at Loki that could possibly make him look as disgusted as he does now.

And, well, Loki’s become more of an animal than he’s been in years in the past week, so he’s not really ashamed of that like he probably should be.

He crosses his arms, and like every time he moves, he smells Thor. “I do.”

Bruce drops the paper and sets down his glasses and drags his hands to his face like he’s scrubbing away the Thor that might’ve gotten on him. If he is, it won’t work because Loki still smells like Thor, no matter how pink and raw he scrubs his skin. “And you’re off suppressants. Under all of that, I can smell you too.”

“ _That_.”

Bruce holds his hands under his chin, his five o’clock shadow spatters of gray, and gives Loki a tired look that makes him actually look 40. “It wasn’t too long ago that you came in here depressed and betrayed and in heat and asked me questions about bonding and sibling relationships that clearly weren’t theoretical.” He frowns. “Loki, I explained that you could survive on your own without him, and I told you I personally knew your pain. You were doing so well. What happened?”

“I had to listen.” He remembers that fine, and he doesn’t need to be told that Bruce was right. He knew what Bruce told him already. He just, he needed to know… “He used the voice on me.”

“There are laws against that.”

“Making me quit suppressants isn’t a crime. According to him, staying on them was doing the harm.”

“I’d consider how you walked in here not healthy.” Bruce almost shouts.

Bruce never shouts.

“My state of health didn’t bother you when you bent me over that desk and fucked me,” he says, and Bruce’s eyes start to narrow. “Really, I don’t think it’s a huge jump to assume that you’re only pissed off because you think he fucked me. I mean, it’s the most efficient way to scent, and I smell like him more than he probably does.” Loki smiles a little. “Losing an omega to his ‘brother’ is almost as bad as losing one to her husband, right?”

Bruce makes a fist and he’s just so disgusted with Loki—and himself because he’s as much an animal as Loki is—that whatever he was reading is interesting again. ”No,” he says as he’s putting his glasses on, “it isn’t.”

He hopes that Bruce’s office stinks of Thor and pisses him off so badly he can’t focus.


	12. Chapter 12

## **

“For someone who barely talks about their brother, I didn’t know you were so close,” Stark says as they’re in an elevator and Loki’s out of sterile, lab-safe clothes and back in his own. He’s halfway between grimacing and that expression he wears when he hears a sex joke so good that even Loki laughs.

Loki’s balancing out Thor clearly because Tony would look a lot like Bruce did otherwise.

“I wouldn’t say we’re close,” he says, the floors swiping by outside the glass. “He’s just overbearing and obnoxious, so I don’t really have a choice but to tolerate it.”

“Gotta keep Mom and Dad happy, huh? Glad Howard and Ma stopped after me. Would’ve been fun to have someone to share the pain of PDA 24/7 but the risk of having some sappy fuck to call little brother or sister is too great. The two of them are bad enough with their… proselytizing.”

They step out onto the first floor, and a blonde woman in a power suit does a double take of him as she steps on, probably making a face like Stark had as she smells inside. The world smells that Thor… “has” him, and Loki’s been told how great he smells by the ones lucky enough to smell him, so he’s a missed opportunity.

“I’d understand if they were like your parents. Finding your ‘perfect bond’ in damned Iceland isn’t hard when you guys are all fifth cousins, but they’re born and bred American,” Stark says. “He’s got two and a half decades on her, which means he went 50 years searching, and it was just luck they finally met.” Here come the Ray Bans even though they’re still inside. “Your parents kind of did you dirty having you here since your alpha is probably back in Iceland.”    

Flushing isn’t in Manhattan, but Thor’s at his frat house downtown, and that’s not that far from here.

He starts to reply maybe, but Stark’s stopped walking right in the middle of the lobby and might’ve cum in his pants—19 is still teenage—by his shell-shocked expression.    

Stark pulls his sunglasses off, and his eyes are darker than normal. “Holy—Loki, do you smell that?”

He inhales, and there’s Thor, but that’s just expected. “No, not whatever you’re smelling.”

Barton and Natasha love romantic comedies in a weirdly non-ironic way, and Loki’s walked by enough times to know the formula, the comedic, Hollywood ugly lead and the attractive, mild-mannered love interest, the wildly unrealistic kiss-in-the-rain confession scene, and of course the gaping-mouthed, “ _Who’s that_?” followed by a slow motion stride of the love interest, which with, “Who the hell is that?” said instead and no slow motion, plays right in front of Loki’s eyes.

He’s ivory and tall. And pretty in the way that Loki is, somewhat. He holds out his hand, so prim, and says, “I’m Edwin Jarvis,” in a posh British accent that just explains how preppy is, and Stark’s the most stupid he’ll ever be shaking Edwin Jarvis’ hand.

Loki doesn’t stifle his laugh when Stark keeps shaking after Edwin has stopped, and Stark yanks his hand back and pulls the rub-hand-over-hair-to-look-normal motion.  

“I’m a first-year post-graduate student at Cambridge University and recently joined the Hale research group for—“

“—Human Ethological Designations in Interpersonal Relationships. Uh, yeah, I’ve heard about their work.”

Edwin smiles, and like a mirror, Stark does too. It’s really out of a RomCom. “Yes. We’ve begun an experiment, and I was required to map the designator loci on my genome. I’d never had the opportunity to enter mine in the database before, and unexpectedly, a match, a near perfect 62 for 65 marker match was found. You, Tony Stark, are my mate.”

If Stark ever claims that he’s not the biggest hypocrite alive then Loki’s going to remind him of now, a few minutes after Stark was saying that perfect matches were pretty much and he’s standing right in front of his. Loki doesn’t get enough irony in his life.

“Wow, that’s, uh… great. You smell great. Greater than great actually and I’m sort of dizzy right now because all the blood’s in my, um, dick. Jarvis? Jarvis. Okay. Jarvis. I’m hungry. Do you want to get something to eat?” Stark asks, and Loki leans in to Stark’s ear and says, “Congratulations,” and leaves him to more of an idiot out of himself to Jarvis.

It’s funny how life and chance work because it just happens that Edwin got into Cambridge in the first place and it just happens that Stark wasn’t too hungover to show up to the internship he probably would’ve lost a long time ago if Howard Stark wasn’t his father and it just happens that today they meet after that conversation Loki and Stark had.

It just happens that Loki’s parents, real parents, were glad to hand their little omega disappointment off to be his very fake parents’ gift to their big alpha son because Odin just wanted Thor to “be happy.”

Loki being happy—as always—was an afterthought.


	13. Chapter 13

## **

Bruce’s writing at the chalkboard when Loki walks into the lecture hall, and Stark’s reading _Popular Mechanics_ with his feet up and smiling like he screwed someone last night.

The, “Two day streak for Loki Odinson,” comes from Stark just as Loki’s taking his seat in the front row, and Bruce’s hand pauses for a second before it moves again, faster and making the chalk screech against the chalkboard.

Loki still of course smells of Thor who comes in just before class starts and instead of sitting at the top, well, in mumbled, “Excuse me”s that people in the row behind Loki just fall over themselves to listen to, sits right behind Loki. And it’s like Loki barely smelled of Thor because he inhales the little breeze from Thor moving, and his toes curl in the tips of his boots as it burns right down his throat and into his spine and from there into his nerves.

Thor’s irritatingly warm hand brushes over his shoulder, his thumb over the side of Loki’s neck, and he says, “Hey.”

“ _Hey_ ” like Loki is one of his frat bros. He should really roll his eyes at that, but he just shifts in his seat and replies as offhand as possible, “Thor.”

Bruce turns around, and no, Bruce was wrong. Nothing about this is like those first weeks of Loki’s freshman year. “For all of you who don’t know, I’m Dr. Banner. Don’t worry. Tony over there isn’t going anywhere and will be here to make himself useful.” He gives one of his small smiles as they laugh the way all people do when it’s 9:00 in the morning. “Today, we’ll be discussing breeding pair formation.”

There are 50 people in the room besides him and Bruce, but when Bruce says things like, “genetic marker compatibility plays a large role in bonds,” and casually follows that with, “which humans have largely gotten around with higher-order thinking,” it’s like Bruce is just sitting in his office and talking to Loki about why the man behind him isn’t really his alpha.

If he weren’t then Loki wouldn’t have to pull some incredibly evasive maneuvers to avoid Thor proving Bruce’s other theories about their relationship right in front of Bruce, and Bruce’s clearly not over his main one since he’s in class for Loki.

It’s thoughtful in a twisted way.


	14. Chapter 14

## **

Edwin is waiting for Stark when they get off, and Stark looks like he’s found some kind of god as he slides an arm around Edwin’s waist like his arm’s always belonged there and calls over his shoulder that he’ll see Loki later.

Life is sort of an asshole to Loki.


	15. Chapter 15

## **

Bucky, who has a gorgeous sleeve of line art tattoos up his left arm all in the same black ink except the red star on his bicep, makes pretty good pancakes out of Loki’s whole wheat mix which Natasha has made mud food-like disks out of on several occasions because she insisted in that calm way of hers on making breakfast, and Loki’s—Frigga taught him how to make perfect scrambled eggs when he was eight, so breakfast isn’t a complete ordeal.

Clint has a class over on West 9th, and Natasha can’t trust him to not get hit by a taxi, but Bucky doesn’t have a class until 12:00 and Loki until 11:45.

Loki gets his sketch book and Bucky runs a hand through his hair and asks, “Where do you want me?” leaning back with his elbow on the back of his chair. James Dean-esque in how devil-may-care he and his pouty lips and white t-shirt are.

He strokes his charcoal in the curve of Bucky’s shoulders, and tells him, “Just like that.”

ESU hires models from Ford and Wilhelmina for their figure sketching classes. And sometimes puts their overstuffed wallet away and brings in volunteer everymen off the streets who fidget too much and can’t shut up. Bucky’s out of a GQ editorial and fills up the silence with his indulgent Brooklynite drawl—his mom is American and they moved to Brooklyn when he was seven; he’s fluent in Russian and going for an MPP in IGA—and he’s the best person Loki has ever sketched.

He looks over Loki’s shoulder after Loki’s done, his triceps flexed firm against Loki’s arm because Bucky’s are crossed, not a defensive tic but dominant. “Probably hear this all the time, but you’re damned fantastic. Almost looks as handsome as the real thing.”

“You’re giving yourself too much credit.” He closes his sketch book and smiles. Bucky has a contagious lopsided smile, and sketching puts Loki in a good mood. “If you’re free tomorrow afternoon, you could come over, and I could sketch you after lunch.”

Bucky says he’s always free for food and admiration.

So, Loki feeds and sketches him as much as he can.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um i guess i should just clarify if anyone needs it which i doubt they do that heats aren't the insane rape-inducing things they are in some fics in this one. they're like a period in terms of life disruption, really bad for some people, a walk in the park for some, and just meh this sucks but i can deal for the rest

## **

“In the majority of humans, heat’s occur bimonthly,” Bruce is saying—to the entire class because Bruce knows that Loki doesn’t need a lesson on basic reproduction and would never say that to just him. “Meaning once every two months. This means roughly six heats a year for those of you scared of a little math.”

Bruce goes to the chalkboard and starts drawing a year-long calendar because Bruce knows that most people, especially people around Loki’s age, are stupid.

Thor’s arms are pressing against Loki’s back, and Loki almost jolts in his seat when Thor’s warm breath ghosts over his ear. “So, what’re we doing for yours?” Thor whispers, an actual whisper unlike the bastardization of one he usually does which is really just talking in a breathy voice.

“My what?” he asks through his teeth, even quieter than Thor.

“Don’t play stupid, Loki,” he says, like they’re 13 again and Loki’s actually playing stupid because a mad Thor is a mad Thor can be fun. “Your heat. What’re we doing for that?”

The people beside him don’t hear, thank whatever god.

“Are you actually asking me that now?”

“Yeah, when else would I? I don’t see you outside of this class, remember?” He makes that sound like it’s Loki’s fault that Loki has to be the responsible one and think on a longer-than-it-takes-to-cum scale. “It’s in like two weeks.”

“Would be,” Loki says, maybe to piss Thor off a little as revenge for not just accosting him after class. “You don’t know that suppressants won’t change my cycle. It might be two months from when I stopped taking them.”

Thor makes a sound that’s less pissed off and more Loki-I-see-what-you’re-trying-to-do-for-once. “Because I know,” he says, so matter-of-fact, and as Bruce turns back around, leans back in his seat, moving his knees to jostle Loki’s like the asshole he is.

Thor still tries to accost him after class, “tries” because Loki’s a somewhat voluntary participant even if Bruce is watching out of the corner of his eye and adding on more to the inevitable lecture he’s going to try to give him. “Come up with something yet?” Thor asks as Loki’s holding onto his elbows, not relaxing into the hand Thor has on his back.

“I’m going to go on with my life as usual, and since our lives don’t overlap except that class, I’ll use heat leave for it.”

Thor’s hand grabs an immobilizing fistful of Loki’s shirt, and Loki’s glad it’s sort of flexible. “You want me to stay away from you? Loki, that’s fucking stupid. I got by because it got easier the longer I was away from you and your scent, but now that I’ve smelled you, actual non-suppressed you, that’s not going to work.”

“Isn’t that what your girlfriend is for?” He gestures toward Thor. “She’s a bikini model and a cheerleader from what I hear. Any woman-loving man’s wet dream and you have her at your beck and call. Anybody really is at your beck and call, Thor. You’re the most eligible person alive, and I’m sure even your Kinsey 1 fans would bend over for you.”

Thor blows air through his teeth and lets Loki’s shirt go. “She’s an AO, Loki. No matter how hot she is, she can’t do anything for me when you’re in heat.”

“Then—“

“—and neither can any other omegas. I’ve tried really damned hard, alright?”

Loki starts a few steps backward. He’s meeting Bucky at Astor Place to go eat and then sketch him. “Well, Viking God, try harder.”

That’s what Loki’s going to do.


	17. Chapter 17

## **

Loki’s drying his hair still damp from his shower—which is always oddly when he smells the strongest of Thor—and there’s a knock at the door not followed by Barton shouting about grease fires or one of the Connery or Brosnan Bond movies being on cable “so hurry the fuck up and make popcorn.”

It’s not relieving. It’s suspicious.

He opens the door prepared to grab the baseball bat he bought when he moved in because he didn’t trust Barton or Natasha no matter how harmless they seemed—Natasha is still unclear—or the fire extinguisher in his closet, but goes for neither.

Barton looks wrecked as he says, “Can we, um, talk?”

The three times Barton’s been in his room, he’s taken under four steps inside before fleeing or getting shoved out, but Loki just watches him sulk over to Loki’s bed and sit still somewhat suspicious.

“Chill, man.” Barton sighs. “I’m not… harboring some biological weaponry in my asshole.”

Loki lets go of the doorknob. “Okay. I’m listening.”

When Loki first moved in, they talked about how their graduation isn’t Loki’s date of notice and they planned on staying here long-term, and Loki is just here to use the extra bedroom which is perfect because Loki isn’t staying here long-term and his graduation is his own date of notice.

Things change.

Barton holds his clasped hands to his mouth. “I’m pregnant.”

Good, no apartment hunting in New York City for Loki.

But Barton pregnant?

Loki’s heard way more surprising things, and Barton and Natasha spend more time fucking than doing anything else, so.

“Didn’t believe it at first but I’m late. A month late. Went through about 20 tests, and they were all positive. Can’t get much clearer than that.”

“And Natasha doesn’t know?”

“She might. She hasn’t said anything, but she wouldn’t. Just how she is.” Barton laughs a little. “You’re the first one to hear the happy news.”

Loki sits down on his desk chair and finishes drying his hair. “Are you keeping it?”

“Don’t know. I’m pretty much at my peak fertility wise right now, but 20’s still pretty young for a kid. Let alone my kid. Thought it’d be years down the line and I’d be Sherlock Holmes with a degree or two under my belt when I first said that.”

“Well, it’s now,” Loki says.

When they were young, 11, 10 young, Thor said that he couldn’t wait until Loki had their kids. They weren’t old enough to know that’s never going to happen.

“You should keep it, Clint.”

Barton’s glossy eyes, light watercolor blue bleeding into white, stop staring down Loki’s floor. “Why’s that? Opportunity for me to fail spectacularly outweighs, what, any sleep you might lose to a wailing baby?”

“Yes,” he says, giving Barton the sarcastic look he deserves, “and I think that this isn’t necessary a bad thing. Like you said, you’re at your most fertile, and five years from now, you’ll be on the decline. This might be the only chance you have to have you and Natasha’s child.”

Barton sighs. “Yeah, I guess you have a point. Still, didn’t take you for the traditional type.”

“I’m not, but it just happens that in this case, tradition and pragmatism overlap.”

“I’ll think about it,” Barton says. “Make my decision and tell Tash. Sure she’s gonna be thrilled.”

“Natasha might have some latent maternal instinct. She did make me chicken noodle soup when I had the flu last year, but only probably because she thought I was delirious with fever and wouldn’t remember.” Loki shrugs. “Well, congratulations, Barton.”

He really doesn’t know how good he has it.


	18. Chapter 18

## **

They weren’t hiring when Loki submitted his resume, but Loki just happened to know that the manager’s probably ESU, NYU, and Columbia’s biggest pot dealer and where the fuck did he hear that oh he doesn’t remember right now but he’s pretty sure whoever it was from might’ve mentioned something about dealing out of the shop but oh Loki would never tell because he’s not like that, lip bite, wink.   

Brock rolled his eyes and said he was lucky he was hot, and well, the rest is history.

Some guys in ESU varsity jackets—which is really stupid because their names are on them, idiots—come in for “the usual,” and Brock mysteriously appears from his office, looking more than a little high, and slides them “ _the usual_ ” bagel to go boxes after they slide him three bills each which aren’t $1’s or $5’s but $100’s. Completely reasonable for a bagel.

When this whole operation inevitably collapses, Loki definitely didn’t know there weren’t actually bagels in there and totally didn’t see Brock pocket the money. Nope, he’s just an innocent bystander charmed by Rumlow’s rugged good looks.

Brock’s done almost doing his job and says, “All yours,” moving from behind the counter. He slaps Loki’s ass on his way because he’s an asshole and really Loki could bathe in Thor’s cum and Brock would just take it as a challenge to piss Thor off except obviously Brock doesn’t know it’s Thor on him.

Townies order their frappes and talk to him over the blender and Sufjan, oblivious to how much he doesn’t care about their dick alpha bitch boss or that “OMG Imagine Dragons” concert they had a “blast” at. Loki learns their deepest darkest secrets from their not ironed OCBD stained with something red and subconscious hiding of their wedding ring in a fist. Just a normal day at work. 

Loki’s sliding a straw in this woman’s espresso and giving her the courteous, “Have a nice day,” and the door dings open and _that_ smell smothers the coffee and pastries and chokes Loki. It’s a complete miracle he doesn’t spill her drink as he hands it to her.

If he wasn’t listening to their blah, blah, blah about their lives before, he really isn’t now.

Thor stares him down behind the only woman separating them, and Loki doesn’t even get out the courtesy because he’s gritting his teeth so hard to not tell Thor to fuck right off and never return.

He folds his arms when Thor steps up to the counter in his varsity jacket, the complete opposite of the guys before. Thor’s more of an alcohol kind of guy. “You hate coffee, and I’m 100% sure you’re on some kind of collegiate athlete meal plan that exempts all food we have here, so I’m going to spare both of us and tell you to have a nice day.”

Of course Thor just sucks his teeth, his eyes going to slits like they do when the sun’s in his eyes. “I could have a cheat week or two, Loki,” he says—instead of lifting his shirt and showing, not telling or something ridiculous like that. “You’re the last person in the word who should be in customer service. If I were anyone else, I’d be gone by now.”

“The exit is still waiting,” he replies. “If you’re not going to order something, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I don’t know. Surprise me.” Almost smiling. “In a good way.”

Okay, so no coffee grinds and garbage juice in a cup. Thor’s not completely stupid enough to test Loki. He’ll just get the same treatment as his girlfriend. Maybe that cheat week in a few thousand calorie cup?

Thor’s always had a sweet tooth, so.

“So, do you need cash?”

That combined with the tablespoons and tablespoons of caramel syrup Loki’s pouring just out of Thor’s view almost makes Loki crack a laugh.

“If I needed cash, I have places to get it before stooping down to menial labor, so no, I don’t need cash. I’m here because I want to be. You know I’ve always been an indie kid archetype. All I needed was the coffee shop job.”

Classes aren’t long enough to occupy a whole day, and his internship is an evening 4:00 to 8:00 and sometimes 10:00 thing. Frankly even with three majors and at least nine classes a term, Loki’s fucking bored.

Even without Loki spelling it out for him, Thor gets that. “And you pick the music, right?”

“In the Flowers” is playing.

“Of course. Why would anyone else?” He caps Thor’s specially made Cheat Week ‘Latte’—using that term very loosely since there’s only like a splash of espresso and milk—and slides it across the counter. “$12.05.”

“$12? There’s nothing on the menu that’s $12.” Thor’s getting his wallet out anyway.

“Well, this isn’t on the menu.”

Thor hands him a $20. “$12.05. You’re really funny, Loki.”

“I know, right?”

Thor’s $7.95 in change goes in the donation cup for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund Brock’s surprisingly passionate about because Thor would never complain about money that he’s just going to spend on beer going to an actual worthy cause. And because it’s funny when Thor just shakes his head.

Thor takes a sip and his grimace turns into one of those mildly surprised, not-bad faces. “You should call Mom sometime. She misses you,” he says, and thankfully leaves.

Loki will just have to add salt or something next time—there will be one because Thor’s Thor and a big pain in Loki’s ass in the bad way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thor's birthday is december 5th so 12/05 huehue  
> wait before i forget in the flowers is an animal collective song that is hype af so go listen to it MPP is a GOAT album their best idc what anyone else says


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a little dose of angst

## **

He hasn’t spoken to… Frigga since accidentally answering the phone during a 48 hour binge on Adderall during a Chem II project, and he accidentally called her “Mom.”

She said she loved him, but Loki knows that’s not true. 


	20. Chapter 20

## **

“So, we’re having it,” Barton says, Ben & Jerry’s in his hand and all over his mouth and Natasha sitting with her legs in his lap and reading a political theory book, unsurprisingly not reacting at all. “The baby. We’re, you know, doing this.”

Loki takes a bite of his oats and after swallowing, says, “Good.”

Natasha peeks around the corner of her book at him, but he just stares at his cereal.


	21. Chapter 21

## **

Bruce, one of the smartest people Loki’s ever met, wasn’t just good for conversation but really, really good sex. The sort of sex that leaves Loki with bruises on his ass for days. The sort of sex Loki hasn’t had since Bruce decided that proving some point was more important than keeping both of them satisfied.

Staring Bruce’s crotch down in class belongs in freshman year where Bruce was trying to pretend they were only teacher and student and he definitely didn’t want to fuck Loki through the floor of his office, and Loki has memories to go on of what that bump in Bruce’s chinos or tweed pants isn’t hiding, but.

Thor likes to lean on the back of Loki’s chair with his forearms pressing into Loki’s shoulders which okay, are tempting to lean back into, and likes to get close to Loki’s ear to whisper shittily, his equally as shitty plaits tickling Loki’s ear in that way that makes him jolt a little in his seat, and frankly, likes to get Loki throbbing and soaking by the end of class.

And it’s not only hard to walk like that, practically dripping and his cock losing circulation in his jeans, but Thor stares the entire time because of course he knows. He can smell. So of course—of course—it’s not memories of that really, really good sex he sees when he’s fucking himself on his fingers.

It’s those memories from longer ago that are really good inspiration but leave him feeling quite shitty afterward.

“You alright?” Natasha asks one night when he’s already cum and making dinner, and he forces a smile on his face and says, lying his ass off, “Yeah, of course.”


	22. Chapter 22

## **

Loki comes home from work, and Steve Rogers and Barton’s favorite twin sophomores, Parker, and Bucky are all inside invited by Barton and/or Natasha without of course asking Loki or shooting Loki a text that someone else’s coat might be hung up on his peg. No, he’s not petty enough to be mad about it, but Mr. and Mrs. Barton are well-adjusted enough to have taught Barton common courtesy, and Natasha didn’t get Olympic gold by being inconsiderate of her teammates—gymnastics isn’t a team sport but still.

Bucky and Steve drink beer in the kitchen like old friends, both their faces splotchy and pink from laughing their asses off. Neither of them sits in Loki’s seat, so he replies to their “Hi” and “Hey, Loki” and leans on the counter to open his water instead of escaping to his room before he’s roped into something stupid.

“Still can’t believe Clint’s having a kid,” Steve says. “Seemed like he was joking.”

“Barton is a kid,” Bucky says. “Kids raising kids. Rarely ends well.”

“Hey, I think he might step up to the plate and surprise us all. Maybe that’s what more of the world needs. Kids raising kids, so the kids have someone to understand them. All this stuff about waiting until you’re pushing 40 to start a family, I don’t buy into that. Family should always come first.”

Bucky tilts his beer toward Steve instead of his head. Maybe lazy or maybe suave. Maybe both. “You’ve got a point there. But I think there’s a certain maturity required to have a kid and not screw it up. Romanoff has it thankfully, so it’s got a chance.” He looks at Loki with that little smirk Loki loves to draw. “Suppose that’s the point of pair bonding in the first place, right? Balancing it all out.”

“Pretty much,” Loki says.

Steve’s giving Bucky a “look,” and Steve’s one to talk with Sam Wilson, star pupil. “So, I was thinking hamburgers and hot dogs tonight,” he says to Loki. “Still pretty warm outside, and we should take advantage of it while it lasts.”

“Because it’s illegal to eat hamburgers in the winter,” Bucky says.

“Yep, haven’t you heard, Barnes? McDonalds, Wendy’s, BK, all closed after December 21nd. Might want to get up to date on the law unless you want to end locked up.” Steve grins and goes, wisely, for the sink before the fridge.

“Didn’t take you for a hot dog person,” Bucky whispers in his ear while he’s cooking beside Steve, and it’s humid and Loki’s hair is sticking to his neck and places on his forehead and through the meat, he can smell Thor, but he won’t have any misconceptions, so he glances at Bucky, begging to be sketched, and says, proudly, “They’re organic.” 


	23. Chapter 23

## **

Jack Rollins, a guy who always comes in before 10:00 am or after 10:00 pm on Fridays with a to-go bag certainly not filled with anything suspicious or illegal and sometimes in a ESU varsity jacket, hands over tonight’s to-go bag to Brock and invites Loki to a party. Loki doesn’t “do” parties, which Brock knows by now, and says, jumping over the counter, “Trust you can close up then.”

You’re welcome, irresponsible dick.

It’s disgustingly humid outside, and there’s way too many people clogging up the sidewalk doing fuck all that Loki, the somewhat considerate person his parents raised him to be, has to do the walking around.

New York City has its pros like all of the specialized stores a two-minute walk away and the sort of gentrified beauty, but the cons, now, those are just far too big for Loki to stick around longer than he needs to, so Clint and Natasha can do as they please with his room when he graduates. Turn it into a nursery for their kid which will be walking and bothering Loki by then.

 _That_ smell then Loki’s arm’s grabbed by a familiar touch, but—

Thor steadies him when it was him who put Loki off balance in the first place, the asshole.

“I think your MO is to kill me to free yourself from our bond,” Loki says and he takes out his ear buds. Thor interrupted “Strange Mercy.”

Thor scoffs. “Come on. You know bonds don’t work that way,” he says, his usual hand on Loki’s back lower than usual as in right above Loki’s ass. “Amma was a wreck after Afi died, and she went soon after he did.”

“Then maybe you’re secretly suicidal.”

“Shut up, Loki. Where were you headed?”

“Home where the heart isn’t but lots of people are,” he says. “You know, Thor, you never told me how you keep finding out when I’m working when it isn’t public knowledge. My roommates don’t even know.”

Thor’s eyes turn this cadet blue in orange light like the streetlights above them sort of resembling dusk back in Walhalla. A light watercolor blue bleeding into watercolor orange. Because of Rayleigh scattering. Loki told him that once, and Thor said he didn’t know Loki was a secret romantic. Ridiculous. “You’re going to be a total ass about it, but… I can follow your scent.”

Loki was good—no, great at hide n seek, and sometimes he hid so well that Thor would just give up and scent him out. Cheating, really, but Thor insisted that because it was a natural thing, it wasn’t.

“Still?”

“I never couldn’t,” Thor says, “but when you were on suppressants, it was harder. I didn’t think you would ever go on them, so I figured it was having no contact. But sometimes, it would go back to being easier. I guess you weren’t as responsible as you think you are.”

“I had the flu and could barely swallow. Suppressants were the last of my worries.”

Thor’s smart enough to not say something like, “ _You should’ve called me_ ,” because Loki should not have and didn’t need to. He might be Thor’s omega, but he doesn’t need Thor, understood?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> strange mercy is a st vincent song


	24. Chapter 24

## **

It’s really not a surprise walking up to Thor’s frat’s brownstone since his addendum about home was pretty much a confirmation for Thor that Loki’s not in a hurry to go home, but Loki’s been here four times, all two years or more ago, and those four times didn’t entice him toward the Greek Life to say the least.

His foot’s in the door—they have the A/C on, thankfully—and there’s shouting already from somewhere. He gives Thor an are-you-fucking-kidding-me look, and Thor just smiles and says not to worry because they’ll be upstairs where definitely Loki won’t hear their dudebro commotion, which as they pass, turns out to be over _Call of_ fucking _Duty_.

 _Call of Duty_.

“How do you live here?” he asks, following Thor up the stairs and the mini-shrine alongside them of ‘Sigma Chi’s G.O.A.T.’s’ which, Loki takes a massively wild guess, Thor is the best of since his name and picture are at the top stair.  

Thor opens the door the ‘Thor’ and ‘Sam’ banners are pasted across and says, predictably, “I just do.”

Thor just does a lot of things like having a huge picture of him and Tom Brady on what’s definitely his side of the room—Sam Wilson has a poster of Usain Bolt, but Sam’s not in it, so whatever—and framing his jersey from his freshman year which _Thor’s_ mom might’ve had a hand in, but Thor didn’t have to hang it like some egomaniac.

“Please tell me this is ironic,” he says, pointing to the red and gray New England Patriots comforter Thor has on his bed and matching pillows, and Thor rolls his eyes and starts to reply, but no, Loki can’t take it. “I can’t believe I ever thought I was related to you.”

Thor gestures to him, and says, “Me neither,” and they both know he doesn’t mean it like that, but they can pretend that he means it the way normal “siblings” do, so Loki flips him off and sits on his Patriots-themed bed (which smells really, really good) and enjoys his cappuccino.

Which splashes over his mouth and down his shirt and onto his lap because jerkass Thor flops onto the bed his hardest even if he tries to play it off casually, sliding his arms behind his head (and the dark blond curls under his arms peeking out of his t-shirt sleeves) and laying there.

His clothes are sticky and lukewarm, and Thor, fucking, Thor, big—dicked—asshole. “You’re such an idiot,” he says, his almost-empty cappuccino going into Thor’s Colts-themed trashcan—Thor used to tell him all about football even though Loki didn’t care, but Thor cared so Loki listened—and he stands up to take off his ruined clothes, and Thor’s there to assist.

He should be mortified holding his arms up as Thor pulls his shirt off, but Thor’s hands are warm and familiar like the look Thor’s giving him. He moves to push off his shorts, but his hands end up covering Thor’s, and Thor’s hands have always been outrageously big compared to Loki’s, but however stupid it sounds, it’s been forever since they’ve been this close to compare.

“Thank you,” he says, and Thor pulls his hands away, so Loki can take off his jeans.

And be left standing in his briefs—when did he get hard?

Thor gives him a t-shirt, and of course it swallows him but somehow doesn’t cover his ass.

Thor’s staring, and Loki’s body likes that a lot (which is the understatement of the year.)

Thor’s Patriot blanket is warm and soft at least so Loki feels a little less idiotic by association (and it’s been bathing in Thor’s smell for however long it’s been since their mom called and reminded him to change his bedding and smells like it, and with Thor sliding in next to Loki, Loki’s pretty much drowning.)

When Thor settles like an inch from touching him, Loki shifts onto his side so he’s not facing him.

“Sam’s probably going to come up after everyone gets tired of him whooping their asses, so don’t freak out,” Thor’s saying through a yawn. “You know him. He’s cool.”

There’s a shelf with unsurprisingly a shitload of trophies but pictures too. Thor and those three guys from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway he’s formed some dudebro Scandinavian union with, Thor and the cheerleading squad which includes his girlfriend front and center, hanging off him, Thor holding his Heisman Trophy, and that picture from when they went to Reykjavik with Thor’s parents when Loki was eight.

Loki when he was 13 and Thor’s mom told Thor to take some pictures for her annual “family” photo album and Thor decided that he was going to play photographer and Loki for some dumb reason obliged. He looks content. Because he was, and he was naïve too.

“Night,” Thor says, and Loki buries his face in Thor’s pillow and stares at his 13 year old self in envy.


	25. Chapter 25

## **

“Going to tell me who’s the alpha all over you?” Parker asks as they’re walking from their Biochem lab and Parker’s keeping more distance than usual because his animal self knows that whoever Loki smells like would snap him in half. Thor would snap him into eighths actually.

Speaking of Thor. Nike’s plastering him all over campus even in buildings where most students haven’t run a lap since elementary school and the only ‘quarterback’ they’re familiar with is the eagle. They might not know what exactly Thor does, but they know Thor.

“My brother,” he says. “We have a class together, and he likes manhandling his little brother.”

Parker snickers at that, the secret sadist. “I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but he, uh, seems like—“

“—a douchebag? No, he is a douchebag, Parker. He’s a lot of other things too, but you have that right,” Loki says, squinting in the sun that’s managed to get right into his eyes. “So, how is Gwen?”

“Gwen Stacy?” Parker picks up his camera and takes a picture of the sky. “Gwen Stacy’s good. Good and happy and really loving Oxford and not missing her boyfriend as much as he misses her.”

“Like Gwen isn’t making bacterial cultures that look like you as we speak.”

“That was incredible. She’s incredible. But it wasn’t of me. It was of Spidey. She loves him.”

“And there’s nothing more romantic than a culture in agar of a pet tarantula,” he says, and Parker’s staring dreamily at his camera where probably he’s found a picture of Gwen, so disgustingly smitten with a picture that Loki just rolls his eyes.

“Yeah. Hallmark’s got a deal going with Gwen for Valentine’s Day. Agar jars of ‘Be Mine’ and ‘Put the U between My L and V.’ Gonna be a hit with the scholars.” He lifts his camera, and it’s aimed at Loki, giving him enough time to give his blandest expression. “I’ll get you a bulk deal so you can pass them out on Park Ave and find your perfect match.”

Thor wouldn’t even know what the hell to do with an agar jar.


	26. Chapter 26

## **

Stark invites—no, pesters Loki into going to dinner with him and Edwin because he has this idea that they’re actually close friends since they happen to share rooms with the other at least five days of the week and Loki needs to know the magic of “ _J_.” Stark’s clearly so stupid in context with Edwin that he’s forgotten to how even say entire names.

Edwin’s as preppy as he always is waiting for Stark after their shifts, looking like the graduate student Stark will never be, and shaking Loki’s hand with the manners no one in New York City has patience for, says, “Please, call me Jarvis.”

“Jarvis.” Loki pulls back his hand, Stark freaking cheesing next to _Jarvis_. “Okay.”

Living with Barton and Natasha has him used to being the third wheel, so Stark pulling out Jarvis’ chair and putting an arm around him and Jarvis ordering for the both of them because he just knows Stark’s damaged taste buds makes him roll his eyes twice. A new low for being around Stark at all.

When Stark’s occupied texting after Jarvis has vainly told him to not take his phone out, Loki asks the lovingly annoyed Jarvis, “Does ESU live up to its global reputation?”

“I can only speak as a student of the Lee School of Engineering, but yes, it does. The instructors seem to know what they’re talking about, but they’re not so open to taking correction even if I don’t mean offense.”

“Yeah, right,” Stark says, looking briefly at Jarvis, so lovingly. “You don’t give a shit about their feelings.”

“Of course I do. They do control my marks. The students, I’m finding, are even more deserving of their infamy. I’ve been invited to join several fraternities under the draw of them throwing the best parties and, er, ‘pulling the best chicks, alpha and omega.’ Even if I weren’t comfortably living with Stark, I would be none too eager to answer them.”

He calls him Stark too.

“Your brother’s a frat boy.” Stark’s put his phone away to lord that bit of knowledge over Loki. Like Loki cares. “Pretty sure that Sigma Chi gets the most pledges because of that fact. Isn’t called the ‘Alpha House’ for nothing. It’s equal opportunity now, but everyone’s ‘alpha’ there.”

“If Thor weren’t in a frat, all of those people would be submitting applications to move into his dorm, and if he didn’t live in a dorm, whatever apartment he’d live in would get lots of prospective renters,” Loki says.

“Dick riders will be dick riders. Got that right.”

The waiter comes by and quietly asks if they’d like a drink because the hostess saw Stark’s corporate card and all laws are subordinate to that, and Stark lazily waves him off with a, “No, just bring the bill,” and turns back to talking to Jarvis.

It’s the first time Loki’s seen Stark turn down a drink.

What love does to some people.


	27. Chapter 27

## **

Barton tries—and fails because he’s a half foot shorter than Loki—to shove the flimsy black and white sonogram in Loki’s face, and Loki gently shoves Barton, who complains that he’s pregnant and that somehow exempts him from personal space rules, a few inches back as he slips his trainers off and looks at it himself.

A jellybean-shaped mass with nubs for feet and hands rests in the black oval of Barton’s womb. Cute in that so-and-so-months-from-now-it’s-going-to-be-a-snotty-poopy-baby-hopefully-with-Natasha’s-deep-burgundy-red-hair type of way.

“How far along are you?”

“Eight weeks.” Barton shrugs at the exasperated look Loki gives him. “What, my period’s always strange mistress. How was I supposed to know I was incubating something in here?”

“Common sense maybe.” He hands it back to Barton. “You’ll be the fun parent at least.”

“Damned right I will be. This kid isn’t going to know boredom until the torment of compulsory education. Even then, it’s after school activities all five days of the week and free for all weekends. Oh, your new best friend was by earlier looking for you. Said he didn’t care if I told you or not, but he clearly wanted me to.”

Loki shucks the water off his hands into the kitchen sink before tearing off some paper towels and turning around to lift an eyebrow at Barton that he doesn’t see because he’s waist deep in the fridge. “James?”

“Yup.” Barton resurfaces with Sunday night’s leftovers, and unsurprisingly, puts the entire container in the microwave. No weird cravings. Just Barton eating a lot. “I asked him if you smelled good to him, and he gave me the death glare. Tash said it was something for him to figure out when I asked her if she knew anything. So, I’m guessing yeah, you do.”

“Why the sudden interest in my personal life? I thought you liked the enigma because it put some excitement in your life after you decoded Natasha.”

“Impossible. There’s no completely decoding Tash. I know what she needs to me to. And no, you told me we weren’t friends and to mind my fucking business, so I said I didn’t care anyway because mysterious you turned out to be a you I could tolerate. Offense meant.”

“None taken.”

“But, I don’t know, you’re not all that bad. A dick but that’s fundamental to your personality.”

“I didn’t know you knew words that big.”

“Exactly. Anyway, before I was rudely sidetracked—stuff doesn’t work on me, Odinson. Miss ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ has been my girlfriend for over four years—you and Barnes. Are you two—?”

“—friends? Yes, I guess we are. I don’t hate talking to him, and he seems to like me well enough.”

Barton takes his large Tupperware bowl out of the microwave, and mumbles something about playing games, but he’s pregnant, and food is more important to him than Loki’s love life or lack of one because well, that’s just never going to really work out, is it?


	28. Chapter 28

## **

Thor’s girlfriend Amora is what you’d get if Thor were born female and not raised by Thor’s parents. She’s fair and symmetrical from eyebrow to toe—Loki’s seen her in only a body paint bikini because Brock bought the _Sports Illustrated_ —and unrepentantly confident. The only woman in the world that’s not just worthy enough for Thor but Thor has to be worthy of, and Loki weirdly respects her for that.

But she, like Thor, is an asshole, so no, Loki doesn’t like her.

“Frappuccino,” Amora says, none of that saccharine sweet in her voice from her last and first visit, and Thor’s girlfriend or not, Loki doesn’t care, so he doesn’t ask and gets on to replicating that one of a kind drink for her to take and be on her way.

“You know I thought long and hard about what I was going to say when I got here,” she says, her fake sparkly green nails tapping an annoying staccato under “Taste.” She’s not even in rhythm for Loki to ignore it which she clearly wants—for him to not ignore her. “I mean, I’m from Massachusetts. They legalized omega-omega marriage in the 80’s. Nothing’s taboo there except bestiality and incest.”

Emphasis on the last word.

“But I don’t need to explain myself. I’m owed the explanation of why my boyfriend calls me Loki in bed if he gets one drink in him.”

Loki poured a bit too much sugar, but he pours in the coffee. Like she came here for a Frappuccino anyway. “I didn’t know Thor was such a lightweight,” he says, picking up the whipped cream.

“Are you fucking him?”

He laughs. A little. “I remember you coming here and saying you were my future sister-in-law which implied that you’re my brother’s girlfriend. I’m not sure you’re talking about my brother Thor anymore if you’re asking me that. If you’re talking about some other Thor then no.”

“Thor Odinson is who I’m talking about.” She leans over the counter, and she has some of the best cleavage he’s ever seen at least. She jabs her fingers on the counter. “I’ve been understanding, thought that the first time he was just missing you a little bit. We were freshman, and he was far from home. Then, it happened again, and your brother is very good at everything he does…”

He almost spills her drink as he caps it.

“…so I waited before I brought it up, joked about it, and he said it was nothing to worry about. You’re his brother, so I figured Thor was telling me the truth. He never lies and will tell the truth even if he knows it’ll piss me off.”

Amora straightens up and flips her hair over her shoulder. “I’m a beautiful woman, Loki, a woman most men and many women would kill for a time with, but your brother comes crawling to me only when he’s drunk these days. And I know it’s not some brotherly sadness why he says your name because I can smell you all over him.”

Then she inhales, smirking, as he slides her drink to her. “And I can smell him all over you.”

Amora’s the counterpoint to beautiful people being stupid. Most people wouldn’t have made that connection even with Thor being a dumbass as a hint, and she’s almost right.

“We haven’t played ‘Doctor’ since we were four and five, so no, I’m not fucking my brother and your boyfriend Thor,” he says, slightly laughing. “We have Heat 101 together, and Thor thinks we need to be involved in each other’s lives. My life now includes someone I’m… seeing, and Thor thinks that’s interfering with our relationship.”

She slides him a $10. “I think you’re lying to me. Thor says that’s your forte.”

“Then go ask him,” he says. He’s keeping the change. “You’re his girlfriend, not mine. I frankly don’t care what you think about me.”

She gives him a one over as she sips her drink, and she says, “I’m sure of that,” and tells him to have a nice day.

He probably wasn’t going to tell her to.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since im too lazy to go back and change it the taste referred to in the last chapter is an animal collective song from you guessed it the GOAT album MPP aka merriweather post pavilion

## **

He gets a text from Thor. The first text he’s ever gotten from Thor besides the yearly ‘Happy Birthday’ that Loki deletes without replying to.

_‘You told her you were dating someone?????’_

No, _‘I’m sorry my girlfriend bothered you with my idiot mistake’_ or _‘Thank you.’_

He and Bucky are standing on the curb of East 4th and Bucky starts to talk about his time as a ‘plebe’ not in the ironic, uncultured swine who exclusively listen to Top 40 radio way, but as an undergrad at West Point which is sort of another factory for the US military industrial complex in Loki’s head but Bucky’s real and so are the dog tags he has under his t-shirt so.

Loki puts his phone back into his pocket without replying.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> non thorki sex warning but hey i warned you in the tags but i promise this isnt the endgame which ill probably never reach but you know  
> ALSO SUFJAN THE MAN

## **

Loki’s not artsy fartsy like people think the Clubmaster Ray-bans he sometimes wears and his elbow-length hair—the sunglasses are vintage and his hair is a part of him, and people don’t cut off their arms, do they— suggest. He _loves_ art. His—Frigga bought him watercolors when he was five because he was inspired by _A Starry Night_ and the fields around their house had to be painted.

Like Bucky has to be sketched in his entirety.

He’s lying shirtless on Loki’s bed as _Illinois_ plays because Bucky saw Loki’s Adz-era Sufjan poster and said no man who wears pink wings can make decent music which is completely wrong. “Jacksonville” is playing, and since the album started, Bucky has only said, “ _He gets it_ ,” after Sufjan’s “ _I am really just like him_ ” in “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”

Bucky’s jeans are low enough to expose his Apollo’s belt, dark hair trailing from his bellybutton under his waistband. Loki’s sketching half of Bucky and half of the jeans Bucky’s wearing. Which is really not acceptable.

Bucky looks over because Loki’s stopped sketching. “Everything alright?”

“It will be after you take your pants off. I want to do a full body sketch.”

He’s dubious. Of course.

“If it makes you feel uncomfortable, you don’t have to, but—“

“I know. I don’t have to do anything. I’m a grown man,” he says, and he’s unbuttoning his jeans. “Just the jeans or the whole deal?” He pauses. His lips are parted and eyebrows lifted, waiting.

“All of it.”

Bucky’s… All of him, Loki’s going to draw all of him, the thighs reinforced with the same lean muscles as Bucky’s arms and chest and abs and covered sparsely with that dark hair that’s thick curls around his soft cock. The pink of his lips diluted with white but darker on his balls, large like an alpha’s should be.

He starts with Bucky’s legs like he would if he were some waifish model from Prague, and he’s focusing, really is, on capturing the strength of them, but Bucky’s, um, cock is no longer that light pink but a pale cherry, red with a dot of white mixed in.

And hard, getting harder actually.

Bucky’s staring as Loki starts to sketch his cock.

Loki’s drawn his fair share of them, being a teenage boy—and having Michelangelo’s David for a not-brother—not too long ago, so it doesn’t take too long to shade the last glint of light at its tip. He considers himself a professional, but Bucky’s fisting Loki’s bedspread as he moves onto Bucky’s pubic hair and clearly needing to get off.

Professors would ask the models to wait patiently, and they’d run out the room when the session was over to go do what they all knew they’d been burning to.

“You can take care of that,” Loki says. “I’ve already drawn it.”

“Really?” Bucky asks, but one hand’s already caressing his thigh in that self-teasing way Loki’s sort of an expert at. “I wouldn’t want to ruin the sketch or anything.”

“Unless we’re talking impressive load shooting ranges, you jerking off won’t erase what I’ve already drawn.”

Bucky’s pouty strawberry red lips part as he takes a breath of Loki’s spotless logic. “This won’t be weird?”

“I’m an art student. I know weird, and this doesn’t even skirt the low end.”

Speaking of skirting the low end, Bucky fingers his balls, which from the sounds of it is something Loki’s missing out on. His nostrils expand and so do the pupils that stare into Loki.

He’s maybe a little wet, and playing professional by trying to dry it all by the sheer force of his thighs only adds some finger-trembling and breath-stealing tingles, so he replaces those breaths like a normal person, but under that inescapable scent of Thor, there’s something new and right here and oh his pencil broke in half, so he should really get a new one, but _._

“Do you want me to--?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky’s warm and soft and hard, so hard, and the, “Fuck,” that comes from his shiny lips is punctuated by him thrusting into Loki’s fist and dribbling precum all over his fingers, which Loki’s body feels the need to replicate in a knee-clenching drip that almost makes him squeeze Bucky a little tighter. A good thing that Bucky likes with another one of those breathed out words, this time something in Russian.

Encouragement is a universal language, one Loki speaks fluently (better at certain dialects than other of course, _his_ dialect). Those octave-climbing pants and muscles winding tighter in Bucky’s neck, long and strong with him throwing back his head tell him all the yeses Bucky can’t.

No. He should be saying, thinking, considering with a naked someone else on his bed, in his room spreading his scent, not over his, no, but clashing with it enough that Loki’s smelling him more than _him_ when he inhales, getting off him and getting him off. And it’s going to stick to his bed and his walls and him, and _he’s_ going to get pissed and scent everything again (good) and probably use the _voice_ on Loki, so—

He’s under Bucky, pinned under him, a strong alpha—but not his, not that that matters because _he’ll_ never be his that way, remotely like this way.

“I ever tell you how great you smell?” Bucky’s nose paints a stripe of wet heat from his temple to his neck, and his fingers slide underneath Loki’s waistband, just his jeans, and when they brush the tip through his underwear, Loki has to shut his eyes. 

He finally says, “No,” when he’s gotten a grip around Bucky’s cock again, pressed against his thigh. It’s a miracle really because Bucky pushes his underwear to the side and into him these fingers—not—like burning steel. He knows the feeling like a tease of being full and whole, but this is like a tease of that, like the lie he tells himself when he’s here alone and those are his fingers looking for something they’ll never find.

Not that Bucky knows what he’s looking for like Loki does and finds under Bucky’s scent. There’s more Russian into the side of Loki’s neck, and a sharp stab of his fast fingers that feels better than it hurts, and Loki’s fist’s completely covered in warm wet.

Imagining that groan a little deeper has him clamping around Bucky’s hand and holding in a keen he doesn’t have enough air for anyway.

When Bucky gets off of him, soul-crushing guilt over something he was within all of his rights to do takes his place. Sufjan’s melancholy moaning in “The Seer’s Tower” is really not helping.

Some tissues are blindly handed in his general direction. Bucky’s too focused on cleaning all traces of Loki, the boy, ew, from his fingers and dressing with the unsoiled hand. Because he betrayed himself and what his heterosexuality instead of someone else like his mate which is way worse, right?

Bucky’s tensed back disappears under his plain white tee. Now, he’s entirely dressed again to turn around and give Loki the despite-the-un-hetero-thing-that-just-happened-i-totally-only-like-girls look. Except his is different than the usual glaring and posturing. It’s no eye contact and hands in his jeans trying to be casual. 

When Loki folds his knees against his chest, he can feel the ache of one of them.

“Um… I’ll see you later.”

“Sure.”

The realistic part of him knows that’s the last time he’ll ever have Bucky Barnes in his bedroom.


	31. Chapter 31

## **

Jarvis isn’t waiting alone when Loki gets off the elevator with Stark.

Oh no, there’s Thor with him, stood there with his eyes crinkled in a smile that’s so history when he sees Loki. If Stark didn’t have the biggest mouth outside of the Porn Industry, scent-neutralizing body spray would be on Loki’s shopping list.

Stark completely denies telling Thor the when about the internship after Loki gives him the look he deserves. “I only said the HQ in Flushing,” he whispers. “He must’ve asked someone else.” No elaborating on who could possibly care enough to know Loki’s schedule since climbing “J” his guardian omega takes priority.

Loki finally takes a breath. It’s full of _that_ smell.

“Hey.” Thor could try to sound enthusiastic in a less predatory way. “Dude, how was, you know, the internship?”

 _“Dude_.” Kill him quickly.

“Great.” He waves back to Jarvis’ sincere have a good night before Stark devours his mouth again. Then glares at Thor as hard as he can. “You don’t have to stalk me because I didn’t reply to your stupid text.”

“It wasn’t stupid.” He shoves the revolving doors with an arm over Loki’s shoulder, totally oblivious of the pissed off looks he gets from the people forced to scramble as usual. “I could’ve dropped by your apartment, but I didn’t. I should’ve though. Maybe I would’ve caught the guy you smell like. He fucking reeks.”

What alpha that isn’t Thor doesn’t reek?

“I actually think he smells good. Just as good as he looks.”

He should really be expecting the hand grabbing him by the arm and turning him around, but still, he almost gasps like an idiot.

“Amora, she said she dropped in to visit you, and you two caught up. That you said you were ‘seeing someone,’” he says like there’s a bad taste in his mouth. “Since when?” 

She didn’t mention that she accused Loki of having an incestuous relationship with his “brother.”

“Since when I became an adult and can ‘see’ whoever I want.” His arm relaxes, but that only makes Thor’s fingers dig deeper into his bicep. There should be grooves in his bones after all these years. He’d rather stare at taxis than Thor’s nonexistent irises. “I can’t ‘see’ anyone ever, Thor. I’ve been enslaved to an existence of constant, involuntary yearning. I’d rather not waste my time and end up in a worse place for temporary enjoyment unlike you. I interpret YOLO differently.”

“So, you’re not seeing anyone?”

He really shouldn’t answer, “No,” but Loki the animal knows what Thor wants to hear and wants Thor the animal to hear what he wants. Natural instincts are a people or technically person-pleasing bitch.

But that isn’t what Thor wants to hear.

“Then you’re just fucking him.”

Some suit gives Thor an appalled look, not that Thor notices.

“Does he know about me? Does he know that you’re—? You have a mate. Does he know that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’m not the one calling your name during sex,” he, not the animal, says, and Thor lets his arm go. “You should stop. She has her own idea of why, and it’s not so far from the truth.”

Thor looks away. He’s not the type of person to get embarrassed, but Loki clearly wasn’t supposed to find out. “I can’t help it. I associate it with you. No matter who I’m having it with,” he says. “It’s the bond.”

“You’re stronger than the bond. Do you listen to Br—Professor Banner’s lectures? If you can break century old records from the time of leather helmets and in-game deaths, then you can keep your deepest darkest secrets quiet.”

“You’re only saying that because you want me to not care about you fucking someone else.”

“I’m not fucking him, okay? So, stop saying that. And if I was, why does it matter? You’re fucking her too although she says that doesn’t happen unless you’re wasted.”

It should be illegal to look like that and make a sorry sound like that. “It’s not fair to her. I know, but I’m trying—was trying to distract myself the best way I could. She’s so hot—“

“Mm.”

“What?” That’s Thor’s version of an ugly look but of course it’s still beautiful. “Don’t agree. You’re supposed to be jealous.”

“She is, and why should I be? She’s your girlfriend. I’m your adopted brother slash omega.” He mostly means the apathetic tone of his voice and for Thor to hear it.

Which he does, looking at the sky instead of Loki who he can’t bear to do anything but stop from running into traffic right now. “Well, we’re stuck with each other, so you should get over it.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” He has stuff to do at the library, the church to Thor’s inner demon, so at the walk sign, he gives Thor a patronizing pat on his arm and says that he’ll see him tomorrow in Heat 101.


	32. Chapter 32

## **

Loki’s reading for PCET—Principles of Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics but really?—and there’s a knock on his room that’s too heavy to be Natasha or Barton’s and too quick to be Thor’s.

“Who is it?”

The door opens and Bucky peers in unlike someone avoiding Loki. “Romanoff said you were doing homework and I figured you could use someone to bother you,” he says, and Loki rolls his eyes and tells him to come in and close the door behind him.

Loki marks his page with his fingers, book sliding between his thighs.

“It smells like me.” Bucky says this sort of… surprised. Amazed maybe? “I would’ve thought your big brother would come in and ruin everything again.”

“Well, he was trying to ward off any big bad alphas with his scent because he knows the dirty, depraved things they’ll do to me if they get me alone in a bedroom.” And Thor’s a possessive alpha asshole and Loki’s “ _stuck_ ” being his omega.

Bucky scans him, in that unsubtle I’m-imagining-you-naked way. He probably thinks he’s so suave in his leather jacket and that all, what little that is, is forgiven. He didn’t even give Loki a thank you for the hand job. “Guy’s got a point, but he smells horrible. If I have your permission, I’d like to air it out in here. Help you… sleep tight at night.”

Loki really doubts his opinion occurred to Thor when Amora first showed him her lair. When Thor was inside of her, it was out of habit, not some obligation that he thought of Loki. The hypocrite is with her, _with her_ , and Loki can’t fuck someone else?

Thor would be so disappointed to hear he’s about two years too late to stop that.

He sizes Bucky up, his legs crossed and leaning back on the bed, and asks, “So, what do you have in mind?”

There are a lot of ways to fuck but not really.


	33. Chapter 33

## **

Thor’s scent has become Loki’s, but there’s something off enough for Barton to pause in his race to gestational diabetes and ask Loki if he’s pregnant too—by the devil of course; Natasha tastes some of the syrup now on Barton’s cheek with her thumb and says Loki’s aim’s gotten better—and for Parker to tilt his head 90 degrees and ask if Loki’s finally found his Gwen Stacy.

Loki’s Gwen Stacy, well, Loki specifically sits in front of an already filled seat hoping that maybe the wilting wall flower hiding in her ESU hoodie will be too shy to answer Thor’s superficially friendly, “Do you mind finding another seat?” with a peep that doesn’t answer him at all. But Thor is the knight in football armor she always wished for, so she gives that peep and scurries away.

Bruce nods in Stark’s direction as he enters the lecture hall and then glances in Loki’s direction. He lingers as long as it takes for him to recognize the glare that Thor’s currently burning into the back of Loki’s head as he comes up with the meanest hello he can.

Because words were never Thor’s area, he just doesn’t say anything at all. You know, that whole silence is more powerful than words in some situations proverb Thor heard from their—his father, not Loki’s.

The silent treatment doesn’t really work though when everyone is being silent. And that means everyone, Bruce included, during those breaks he gives for note-taking Loki already has done because freshman haven’t gotten the hang of actually reading the assigned text. Since pen carves into paper behind Loki, Thor hasn’t either.

A small ball of paper drops into his lap.

The people beside him are too busy scribbling to notice.

He covertly unravels the ball on top of his notebook. It’s a strip of paper torn right from Thor’s notebook in that perfectly imperfect way he used to during those high school classes they ended up having together not because Thor was a slacker but Loki was a “try-hard” according to all of Thor’s friends.

In that heavy-handed, blocky writing: _‘Go to the bathroom.’_

For what? Thor to scold him?

He writes back: _‘ I_ _can wait until after class. I have a durable bladder.’_

Loki casually drops the ball over his shoulder. There’s no ping of it on the ground, so Thor catches it.

The ball lands on his lap again.

_‘I need to scent you. Now. I’m going to go insane if I have to smell you like this the rest of class.’_

It’s really, really… stupid how he actually entertains that idea, of Thor scenting him soon but even more stupid that he almost agrees. He isn’t a slave to his instincts.

He puts pencil to paper and takes one of those why-me­ breaths.

Holy fucking shit, what is _that_ —? _That_ smell is so…

He opens his eyes because he closed them at some point, and oh, he’s hard, really hard.

And wet, sopping because he’s evidently pubescent again.

His jeans are far too dark to see fortunately. Barton and his criticism of Loki’s somewhat uniform wardrobe can eat his heart out.

But his jeans won’t prevent him from leaving a wet spot if he stays here. That smell, that delectable, amazing smell, hasn’t dulled because he’s _right_ there and neither has that aching throb between his hips.

“Oh, shit,” Thor’s saying right into his ear, his breath like fire and his velvety voice touching Loki like he doesn’t but really, really needs to.

He stuffs his fingers into his mouth to muffle that moan of yes, yes, please smell him, scent him, fuck him now please before he dies from burning alive.

Some stiff and painful maneuvering on his part gets him standing with as little commotion as possible, and he’s half-proud, half-pissed at himself for looking at Thor with his sweaty, shiny skin and not leaping the seats into his lap. But it’s the sight of Thor too many steps behind him that keeps him collected enough to get his ass out of the lecture hall.

He doesn’t even run this fast during his evening jogs.

And he hasn’t needed a restroom this much. Ever.

His legs are too slow, too stiff and weak, and his hands impossibly slippery on the door handle, but he makes it inside out of necessity.

His smell—a hand that burns so perfectly wraps around his arm, and he’s led into the nearest stall which is still so far away, and the wall forces all of the air out of him so he has to breathe in, and Thor is not only in front of him, touching him and burning him, but everywhere. It’s still not enough.

Thor tastes just as perfect as he smells, and Loki opens his mouth wider to let Thor taste him, and Thor’s tongue is rough and warm and slick, and he feels perfect and hot and safe too.

Thor’s jeans are in the way, but Loki gets rid of them, and Thor is red and thick and long and Loki needs to feel it inside of him like he feels Thor’s tongue.

He needs it. He _needs_ it.

Thor’s saying, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” into his mouth, and Loki’s jeans are gone too, and the air’s cold against his soaking, beating lips, the wall against his lower back, and Thor’s so close.

And pressing inside of him, big and stretching him and the sting slides up his sides and around to his spine. He can taste it at the back of his tongue, behind Thor, and he can feel it, that need for Thor to go deeper, so he tightens his knees around Thor’s hips, says it against Thor’s lips, but it’s broken off because Thor knows how deep he needs it.

The pain breaks Loki’s lips from Thor’s, that depth where there’s no more to go, and Thor’s against him, fire where Thor’s hands hold his hips.

“You’re mine,” Thor says, and Loki’s nodding and grabbing tighter onto his firm shoulders.

Thor’s gone and Loki’s empty then Loki’s full and Thor’s sliding inside of him, rubbing him everywhere.

Long and thick and warm, and Loki inhales and tastes and inhales as that pressure between his hips, where Thor slides in and out and Thor’s shirt rubs against him, builds and builds and Loki’s going to—

His heart’s seized and fire slides to his clenched fingertips and curled toes, burning him out, but the warmth inside of him, it drips through his bones and douses it, more flames gone with each pulse of warmth deep, so deep inside of Loki.

Thor’s so deep.

“Don’t knot me,” he says, quieter than he’d want because he wants, god, he wants—

The flames go, but there’s only more warmth, and Loki’s fuller and fuller.

So full.

Jackass.

Thor’s forehead is sticky and wet and sweaty against his neck, and Loki holds onto him because they’ll both end up on the ground if Loki tries to move. Attached at Thor’s stupid, big, and knotted dick.

“I can smell him all over you,” he says. Low. And moves a little so that fullness does inside of Loki, and well, it’s—completely—kind of pleasantly… familiar.

But they’re in a bathroom stall which is technically public and Loki told him not to knot him, but Thor wanted his revenge.

“We were together yesterday,” Loki says as matter-of-fact as he can with Thor inside him. “He sometimes lets me—“

Thor gives him the most incredulous look. “Why are you thinking about him right now?”

“I’m not the one who brought him up,” he says, “and if you want to talk about her, I’m sure we’ve got a lot of time for you to tell me about the interesting hobbies she has besides drilling me with questions about our supposedly incestuous relationship.”

Thor grabs his hair and kisses him hard and sloppy like he didn’t hear anything Loki said. But he did his, “I’m going to fuck him off you,” reveals, and that wholeness from being knotted and filled starts to subside because Thor’s knot is and that sticky wet is starting to drip out, so Loki bites Thor’s lip hard enough to bleed and clenches for Thor to get the idea to start thrusting again.

Somewhere between the third and fifth knot, they make it into a cab for Loki’s.

They—Thor—tips the driver big to pretend he didn’t see anything in the rearview mirror.


	34. Chapter 34

## **

Thor skips his classes and practices, and Loki takes three days of heat leave.

Not that he knows it’s been three days until he shambles out of his room and Barton says so with a mouthful of the Chinese food Thor went out to get at some point earlier this morning or um, late last night maybe.

There’s really no difference between the two when the curtains don’t let any light through and no sleep takes place. Naps, obviously, but those lasted as long as the last load, pardon Loki’s bluntness. He’s allowed to personally have that when he can’t with Barton who whines about whether Loki’s still contagious or not because Loki was sick. Very sick and Thor, his devoted big brother, has been taking care of him the past three days. Night and day.

Natasha doesn’t comment on what she might smell on either of them or might’ve on Thor the times he left to get them the basic means for survival, and she in her lurking around emerged from the shadows to confront him. Though that would’ve been useless to her since Thor hasn’t been exactly of sound mind these past three days either.

The biological imperative is hard to overcome. Impossible even.

“Nice of him to do that,” Barton says between slurps. “Maybe if we keep this one from turning out to be a douchebag, we’ll give them a little shit of a brother or sister. They won’t be as bad as you. I think that’s impossible. Real impressive of your parents to manage the job they did, especially a really nice person like your mom.”

“I know,” Thor’s voice is behind him, and Loki has to hold in that smug smile as those dirty, borderline illegal things in that voice replay in his head. “I always tell her she’s the best mother either of us could’ve asked for.” 

So, he didn’t hear the first part then.

And Loki didn’t ask.

Barton’s clearly perturbed at Thor’s existence in his vicinity. “Uh, Loki, didn’t tell us you still had company. Would’ve appreciated that.”

“Hey, Thor,” Natasha says, eyes on the TV, _Goldeneye_ specifically, and Thor drops onto the back of the couch, saying, “Romanoff.”

They’ve always had classes together, but Natasha’s never been carrier pigeon for whatever Thor might’ve had to say. This is why Loki likes Natasha even if they don’t talk much.

“Well, Barton”—he glares at Thor as he tries to catch Loki’s leg between his, the man-child—“I figured you had some common sense to realize that, but if I hadn’t, I don’t owe you any forewarning. Treat people as you want to be treated.”

“But this is different,” he starts to say, and Thor’s squinting at him, the safety off on his hair trigger temper. He falls back into the couch cushions beside Loki and focuses hard on Pierce Brosnan’s smolder. “Don’t pick fights you can’t win, Barton. Gonna get you and junior killed.”

“Talking about yourself in third person might too,” Loki says, and Thor’s leaning forward, elbows on his knees, smiling at Barton.

“Wow, you’re pregnant, man? Congratulations,” he says, which Barton’s clearly not expecting from the guy that’s been turned into Swiss cheese on the poster in his and Natasha’s room, and murmurs the funniest, “Thanks,” Loki’s heard in a long time. “If, you know, you don’t mind me asking—“

“I mind.”

“Clint, don’t be an ass,” Natasha says. “12 weeks.”

“Makes sense why you don’t look pregnant then yet. Not saying that you’ll be big or anything, but you’re pretty short, so.”

Loki has to laugh at Barton’s exasperation.

“Hearing this heightism is making me understanding why you don’t talk about your probably actually shady parents.” Barton’s pacified by the hand Natasha puts on his knee and mumbles about wishing they chose a better roommate, but they know Loki’s the best choice they could’ve made. “So, Thor, I’ve been dying to ask you why the hell do you call the riskiest plays?”

“Because it’s fun,” Thor says, holding his hands out in a what-the-fuck-else-would-it-be-I’m-so-awesome-and-knowledgeable gesture, and Barton scoffs and starts airing his grievances, but Loki’s good at tuning out his voice by now.

Since he’s already missed practice, Thor suggests some Italian place uptown for dinner, and Loki goes with him to pick it up only to make sure that they get their order right because Thor will put anything in mouth as long as it tastes and smells good.

He knows from up close and personal experience.


	35. Chapter 35

## **

“Didn’t last long,” Bucky says as he smells Thor thick and fresh in the air and no trace of him, frowning a little.

“He’s… thorough,” Loki says, and Bucky laughs and doesn’t ask about the turtleneck Loki’s wearing.


	36. Chapter 36

## **

Bruce comes in in the brown tweed blazer he first fucked Loki in and orders—

“Chai tea?”

“Yes.”

Loki makes a polite sound and points down the counter. “You can wait there. It’ll be ready in a few minutes,” he says and opens his mouth with “Next” right on the tip of his tongue, but Bruce’s saying, “I went about it the wrong way, and I’m sorry.”

The next customer, some freshman that agreed _Actor_ is the best St. Vincent album, smiles and nods when he tells her to wait just a moment.

Bruce mirrors him as he moves behind the counter to make Bruce’s chai tea. “You’ve never been one to take words at face value. When people tell you do something, you do what you were going to. I told you to do something. I should’ve known you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t want to. Which you have the right to.”

“Of course, I do. I’m younger than you, professor, but I’m an adult too.”

“How… are you?” Bruce isn’t looking for a “good, professor, et toi?” but it’s tempting to give him one even if Loki’s at work.

“I’m like I was five years ago. Suppressant-free and not completely miserable.”

“So, you two are… helping each other?”

Loki’s pouring enough scalding water to not need to look at it to aim at the cup, so he smiles wryly at Bruce’s version of ‘ _are you two fucking?_ ’ and the underlying jealousy there that his 20 year old boy toy won’t be crawling back to him out of necessity. “I never knew you to ask pointless questions you already know the answer to.”

“Assumptions never got anyone anywhere except misunderstanding.”

“What can I say then? Family helps family, especially when it’s mutually beneficial and biologically encoded.” He presses the lid onto Bruce’s tea and slides a straw in and holds it out as Bruce pulls out a $5. “I’ll see you in class, professor.”

Bruce takes his tea and his change. “I’m never too busy, Loki,” he says, and he slides his change into the donation jar.  


	37. Chapter 37

## **

Tony shows up with Jarvis on a Friday night, the third time today that Loki’s seen him, and says he warned Loki by saying I’ll see you later which he always says and after Loki doesn’t move out of the doorway for him, adds on that he came to see if Barton had gotten fat yet, which does get Loki to grant them entry.

Wanda hears this and shouts from down the hall, “This is a body positive space.”

“Yeah, yeah, you liberal. He’s going to get fat. Deal with it,” Stark says as he’s taking off his trainers, and there are already almost a dozen pairs there, including Loki’s, Barton’s, and Natasha’s.

And okay, Loki doesn’t pay 2 and a half grand a month to stay in a closet—it’s a steal actually and Barton explained when Loki asked what the catch was that his mom had dirt on the super and Mrs. “No, please, call me Maria” Barton has a very unnerving smile, so Loki doesn’t doubt that’s the truth—but there’s a maximum capacity their apartment can hold. No, not management-mandated, but Loki-mandated.

“I did suggest that we call, Stark,” Jarvis says, hanging Stark’s jacket.

Stark stops right in front of Loki with his arm around Jarvis’ waist and says, “Everyone meet, J. J, meet everyone,” and Jarvis follows that up with a little bow and a, “It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” that gets an, “Aw, he’s British.”

Barton comes out of the kitchen to point to the growing but still small curve of his stomach and say, “It’s all baby. Still fitter than you, nerd,” and with Steve, Wanda and thus Pietro, Parker, Natasha, Barton, Jarvis, Stark, and him, there’s way too many people in one room, so Loki does them all a favor and goes to amass a stockpile of necessities for remaining in his room for the foreseeable future.

Of course— _of course_ —there’s a knock at the door while he’s grabbing it all, and everyone’s too engrossed in talking extremely loudly over each other about the biggest pregnant stomachs they’ve seen to hear it, so he has to balance it all and answer the door to tell Natasha and Barton’s latest invitees to screw off.

Except it’s Thor, which Loki would’ve smelled if he wasn’t so pissed, and Sam Wilson.

“Come to join the party, I see,” he says, and Thor’s taking some of the stuff out of his arms without Loki even asking.

He tries to take it all actually, but Loki keeps ahold of his pita chips. “They’re having a party at our house, and coming here sounded like a better idea.”

“We’re all partied out,” Sam says, taking off his bright orange sneakers that were probably a gift from Thor that Thor got from Nike but still, taking them off where they’re meant to be taken off. And he starts to take his jacket off, but another one hung up catches his attention, and Sam sniffs a powder blue jacket Loki knows is Steve’s.

He doesn’t even have to show Sam the way to the gathering.

“When you said your roommates have people over, I thought you were exaggerating,” Thor says, and he gets this look weird on his face as he takes a deep breath.

Parker.

“Thor—“

Parker’s flailing on the couch arm and talking to Stark who’s paying attention to Jarvis talking to Natasha, and it’s horror movie-esque how Thor looms over him and Parker slowly stops talking and flailing and realizes his life might be in danger and looks up.

He can never say Loki’s never done him a solid because Loki puts a hand on Thor’s arm and asks him if he’s going to sit down so Loki can enjoy his snack or if he’s planning to stand there all night like an idiot.

Thor sits on Barton’s soccer ball bean bag and pulls—no, yanks Loki down on it next to him, the asshole.

Parker’s feeling brazen again, this nervous smile on his face. “The guy from the posters. Thought you only wore spandex and those arm pads. Like you need them with those, um, deltoids and trapezius muscles and a few other things there I’ve only seen in Superman comics.”

Cinnamon pita chips and Parker being Parker. Loki’s night hasn’t turned out all that shitty (and Thor’s arm is comfortable around his waist too.) 

“You don’t get the name Viking God not looking like this,” Thor says, and some of Thor’s new audience mistakenly thinks he’s being ironic and laughs, but they don’t know Thor. Viking Douchebag is probably what Parker’s thinking too. “So, you are…?”

“Peter Parker. Aka Peter_Parker_69 on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. All other 68 numbers were taken. I swear.”

Thor laughs a little. “Since I know that’s a lie, how did you end up in Loki’s room?”

Wrong phrasing, idiot.

“Yeah, Peter, how’d that happen?” Stark asks, Jarvis shaking his head.

“I know. Hard to believe he lets himself be seen with me in public. But in his secret sanctum? Never would’ve thought my possibly psychopathic, mostly antisocial lab partner would have his own little section on my wall. And wow that sounds creepy, but I mean it in a photographer, click, click way. Not a skin Loki and wear him like a bright white leather coat way.”

Loki swallows his chewed chips and dip. “My hide would be too valuable to wear, Parker. You would keep it as a tasteful tapestry to preserve it.”

“He’s right. Regular oiling would keep it from drying out,” Jarvis says, and Natasha nods.

“Getting some real crazy vibes here,” Sam says, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Steve, and Jarvis says that he hunted quail and deer with skeet rifles as a child, and he’s slowly becoming a pastiche of the well-to-do England Loki’s read about in his lit classes.

“So, you have a lot of pictures of Loki, right?” Thor asks, and Parker shrugs and affirms. “You should make me copies. All the pictures I have of him are old, and Mom would definitely want them for her photo albums.”

Thor’s mom, not Loki’s.

“Alright, I make you copies,” Parker’s saying, searching in his hoodie pockets, “but now, you make me the greatest boyfriend that’s ever lived and talk to Gwen. Gwen Stacy. She has a thing for your voice. For your everything. But I’m sure newborns and grandmas do too. So, can’t really be jealous.”

Thor’s holding Parker’s phone and after a, “Hey, Gwen?” there’s a squeal everyone cringes at while Thor just laughs and pretends that Gwen’s not rambling about how hot and talented she thinks he is because Thor’s an arrogant asshole but considerate too when he tries. 

Parker tells him that he has the best brother ever, which is clearly how everyone feels, asking Thor for his life story and staying attentive as he goes on and on about sports and meeting celebrities and too often their shenanigans as children, and Loki’s not so sure about any of that.


	38. Chapter 38

## **

Barton screams at the TV during ESU’s game against Notre Dame and calls Thor an “adrenaline junky asshole” instead of a “stupid douchebag.” No, Loki doesn’t sit down and watch the game with him, Steve, and Pietro and by extension Wanda, but at least the things Barton’s screaming now are true.

Thor is an adrenaline junky asshole (which is why Loki’s not in complete despair that he’s his adoptive brother too since he’d rather it be him than anyone else.)


	39. Chapter 39

## **

Barton talks about going trick or treating in Brooklyn as he shoves pancakes into his mouth. Last year he didn’t have the stomach but did have the tower of pancakes. Really, he’s been pregnant all his life.

“I’m sure loading up on sugar is good for your unborn child,” Loki says.

Barton pours more syrup as he tries to stare Loki down. Futile because Barton is more harmless than usual, pregnancy and all. “When you’re majoring in obstetrics”—Loki gapes in awe that Barton actually knows the word, and Barton flips him off—“then you can give me advice, kid.”

“’Kid.’ You’re barely older than me, idiot.”

Barton “excuses Loki’s disrespect” since Loki has two arms and a Damian Thorn-like charm that’ll get unsuspecting people handing him out candy that Barton just assumes Loki’s going to give to him or even be there to get because it’s somehow mutually beneficial. Loki’s not really seeing the benefit, especially not in, “You get to dress like a girl without society’s judgment, dude. That’s your dream.”

Not really.

“Tash is talking Barnes into it. You two can go as Bonnie and Clyde. It’d be cute.”

“What are you smoking,” he asks, “and did you know it’s bad to do drugs during pregnancy?”

“I’m always asking that myself,” Natasha says, ruffling Barton’s hair as she passes. “But I have Barnes convinced. I think he’ll be happy to go. And if you go, he won’t be so cynical about it.”

Loki shrugs. “I probably have work.”

“Then bat your lashes at Rumlow and tell him you’re taking the night off,” Barton says. “You never have issues taking off when new _Hannibal_ episodes come on.”

He has class, so any other counterarguments Barton has involving the exceptions, not the rules, will have to wait. Until then, Barton has Loki’s answer, one lopsided smile and a, “Thanks but no thanks.” 


	40. Chapter 40

## **

“We’re having a Halloween party,” Thor says with his forearms draped on Loki’s shoulders like it’s the most natural thing. “The theme’s angels and demons because zombies and werewolves are played out.”

And who doesn’t want to see the angelic asses and demonic cleavage of the coeds they invite, right? 

“Barton and some of his friends are going trick or treating, and they invited me,” he says which is totally a non-answer under scrutiny, but it serves its purpose. Maybe.

Thor leans in so they’re almost cheek to cheek. “You can do both. Go trick or treating with them first and then come to the party. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

“I’m not doubting that it’ll be fun for you. You are a party animal. I’m not.”

“I know,” he says, teasing like that smile. “But this is different. In a good way.”

As Bruce enters, Thor leans back and gives Loki space to breathe in somewhat clear air, and Loki’s clear head still isn’t awed by either Thor’s or Barton’s offers and the perks they’re claiming in them. Because Loki can buy himself a bag of candy and go through Natasha’s stash of mixers and have a great night alone, better even than it’ll be with them. Thor’s not going to be by Loki’s side all night, not that Loki wants him to be, and Bucky’s good company, but good enough to balance out the others?

“Barton invite you out for mass candy extortion too?” Stark asks at the end of class, not sounding too enthused either. “J says we should go to mingle, but I know it’s because he wants to show off his costume. He’s actually Alexander McQueen reincarnated.”

Thor makes a face meaning “who?” but it’s too funny for Loki to bother answering and erasing it. He’ll Google it later it bothers him that much.

A Batman comic slips out of Stark’s Popular Mechanics, but Thor catches it for him, looking more amused than disapproving, the rebel he is too. Stark can’t even bother being sheepish and just shoves it under his arm. “Barton told me your other half’s going to be there, which I’m pretty excited about.”

“What?” comes out of not only his mouth but Thor’s.

“You didn’t tell Big Bro here? I heard through the grapevine Odinson the Younger here finally found his match.”

He will destroy Clint Barton’s life.

“No. No, he’s making shit up to amuse himself,” Loki says. “Bucky is not my ‘other half.’ Don’t ever say that again.”

“’Bucky?’”

“Yes, it’s a nickname,” is all Loki tells Thor because Bucky doesn’t go by Bucky in school, so he can’t hunt him down through that name. He walks away from Stark before he can say anything that can lead Thor to him. “Ignore everything Tony just said. He’s been fed misinformation.”

There’s a small crowd of phones at attention in the hall, phones and other things with that dark, thick scent emanating from it.

Blonde and busty and busy posing for selfies but not when the cameras start moving to Thor, Amora. She sashays up to Thor and throws her arms around his shoulders and her tits in his face before she snakes her tongue into his mouth.

Thor’s hands are like negative magnets to her positively charged ass.

They’re the envy of everyone.

A way, way worse person would be thinking if she knows what Loki tastes like since Thor probably went to her after those three days to burn off some of the guilt with sexercise.

But then again Loki’s like the worst person, so he laughs loud enough for them to both hear before he walks away.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think im doing this short chapter thing as the rebound from the massive chapters i usually do. And it's hip. What all the kids 'er doin', eh?

## **

The _‘I know where you live’_ note under Barton’s bedroom door is fully deserved. No one can tell Loki otherwise.


	42. Chapter 42

## **

For a pregnant person, Barton’s doing a good job at avoiding Loki, but that’s probably Natasha being protective instead of Barton being stealthy. Barton’s death does mean the death of their unborn baby, and Natasha’s been swapping the political affairs books for _On_ _Child Rearing_ and Russian titles that aren’t the classics.

Since the “Amora incident,” Thor’s also been avoiding Loki outside of class and those five minute conversations at street corners Loki’s supposed to believe Thor just happened to stumble on and not actually track Loki’s scent to. Because that would be weird, and Thor is a totally normal person and not checking out what to the world is his little brother’s ass when Loki bends down to tie his sneakers and just rubbing Loki’s back like a good big brother, not rubbing his scent all over Parker’s and all those other alpha’s who aren’t him Loki’s around.

Except Thor is not a normal person. Drowning himself in Amora’s nose-irritating scent furthers the illusion, but as long as Loki smells like him, Loki’ll always know the truth, no matter how ugly that truth is.    

As much as Loki loves pretty things, he actually has a soft spot for ugly ones.


	43. Chapter 43

## **

“Um, did I just walk into some satanic ritual?”

The headdress, Maleficent’s headdress, does resemble Baphomet’s goat horns, and the flowing all-black robe resembles something a pagan priestess might wear, especially with the plunging feather—faux, he likes birds more than people—neckline, but, “No, I didn’t have enough candles.”

Parker the red Power Ranger holds two fingers under his chin, substitution for the dubious look the mask covers. “Oh.” He snaps. “Sleeping Beauty villain. Maleficent. Angelina Jolie with the crazy cheekbones except they’re fake, and yours aren’t. Wow.”

A little bit of cheek contouring and he’s ready to scratch diamond. This body that a lot of people outside of that little North Dakota town would kill for is like the least fate could’ve given him.

He’s so gracious in accepting their compliments because there will be a fair share of non-compliments later from some insecure dudebro wishing he wasn’t curious what’s underneath Loki’s robe or some skimpy witch who ran into someone with the same costume that she so wore better. That freshman year as Esmeralda taught him enough to stay in last year and marathon those campy _Halloweentown_ movies.

Clint pulls up his red Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Turtle eye mask to ask if Loki’s planning on bludgeoning him with his staff, and Loki throws his head back to laugh and say, “No, I’d be using yours.”

Natasha in her yellow April jacket takes Clint’s plastic staffs slung over plush his turtle shell, effortlessly looking badass than is fair, which Clint literally purrs “Cowabunga” at, so Loki vacates the kitchen before he witnesses any bestiality.

Incest is the taboo way closer to home for him.

Jessie and James slash Wanda and Pietro in the R shirts and spray-painted red and blue hair, Steve in a white wig and black turtleneck as Andy Warhol, unsurprisingly Stark in Bruce Wayne in just a tux, Jarvis as an incredibly convincing and chrome Robocop, and Parker wait in the front hall like a bunch of smiley children with their empty candy bags.

There’s a knock on the door, and Loki barely twitches a finger before Steve’s already opening it.

“Bucky.”

Bucky as… Snake from _Metal Gear Solid_ aka ‘Clint screeches at the TV and calls Loki a cheater’ the game comes in, you know, black eye patch, gray bandana, army fatigues, and a huge gun, which is “100% plastic” he assures them.

Snake was already sexy in that Brock Rumlow way, but the look suits Bucky. A lot.

“You look like something stepped out of a movie,” Bucky says, smiling like Snake doesn’t.

“And you look like someone stepped out of a video game.”

It’s so corny, but all of that time he’s spent with—Thor—Stark has rotted his sense of humor, so corny is funny. So stupid.

“We ready to go?” a suspiciously happy Clint shouts, and Loki has this feeling that he should not touch those staffs Natasha’s holding. Ever.   


	44. Chapter 44

## **

Stark somehow has friends, Pepper Potts that really high-strung alpha that’s president of ESU’s student union being one of them, and a grand total of three more people who voluntarily spend time with him, a Ph.D. student Maya Hansen with a five year old son Eric and four year old daughter Ellen dressed as fire because that’s their favorite thing du jour, and a guy doing dual degrees at West Point and ESU also named James but Stark calls “Rhodey”, and the biggest omega Loki’s ever met who knows Thor like everyone else claims to but really does since he plays football and majors in sports science that goes by Happy.

And Maya Hansen has a fiancé “Aldrich Killian” who isn’t friends with Stark but Maya’s possessive alpha dressed as Steve Jobs, who he calls a hero, but he holds his kids hand as he runs with them instead of doing the mean adult, helicopter parent act.

And Steve of course has friends because he’s the most likeable person to have ever existed, and there’s a major overlap of Steve’s friends, a mix of alpha and omega guys on the G.I. bill in grad school, and the ones Bucky’s made these past few months, so Bucky’s happy to talk to Gabe or Jim or nickname Dum Dum or Jacques or James #3 or Other Sam instead of Loki.

He’s actually sort of glad he doesn’t have to feign interest for any extended amounts of time and can enjoy the scenery of Brooklyn in all of its gentrified and graffitied glory without really being bothered, but. He could get more notes on Tumblr than he does compliments from the people who aren’t intimidated or terrified, and he wouldn’t have to snatch the edge of his robes from under someone’s shoes if he were at home enjoying candy he would definitely like because he bought it himself.

Because Loki hates, hates, hates skittles, and his bag’s not rattling because of M&M’s.

Ellen and Barton have to pee, and James #3 and Jacques are going to buy a case of beer “for the road” like public intoxication isn’t a crime and the NYPD aren’t crawling the streets tonight, so they’re all standing on the sidewalk at the east end of Grand Street in what’s turning out to be pretty cold weather.

Loki’s really over this whole thing already.

When he breathes in, he smells… _that_ smell?

There’s no him on the sidewalk, this one or the one across that clusterfuck of traffic up and down the street.

Maybe it’s just him and the Thor that’s always sticking to him somehow. It’s like Thor is in his body wash.

“Sam,” Steve says, no, shouts, waving his arm in his black turtleneck.

Sam and—Thor with angel wings and no shirt are walking between taxis, then onto the sidewalk, and um, where are Thor’s pants? Pteruges, those leather strips Roman gladiators wore, and some feathers are not pants and barely pass as a skirt because going off what Loki knows and has seen, Thor’s about two to three inches away from a public indecency charge.

Never mind. There’s some elastic waistband under that, so at least he’s wearing underwear. Not that that changes much since he’s not even half but ¾ naked.

He’s actually glistening. Like gold or something.

Sam, Sam is at least wearing pants without his shirt, but the way Steve’s staring at him behind the Warhol glasses, you’d think he wasn’t.

Thor is so obvious with his once over.

But Loki does not—does not—allow himself to smile even a little bit.

“Hermes is an angel?”

Thor shrugs one of his glistening shoulders, and more muscles than a man should have flex. “If Maleficent is a demon.”

“I never said I was going to your party.”

Thor steps up to him, as in personal space becoming communal space between just the two of them. He touches the feathers on Loki’s collar, and the way his pinkie seems to drift from the feathers to brush the satin against Loki’s nipple really can’t be an accident. And isn’t, Thor makes clear with that irritatingly knee-clenching smirk of his. “Don’t I look hot?”

If Thor didn’t have that face—

“Hey, Thor, my shirtless man,” Stark says, and he has Bucky with him.

That could be a problem, huge, angry problem.

Thor’s doing the Golden Retriever Guy act holding out a fist for Stark to bump and obviously still on exhale, and Loki feels both metaphorically and literally like he’s standing in the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, helpless to just wait to be vaporized as Thor runs out of air after his, “Bro, you’re a little too short to be James Bond.” The millisecond pause after he’s finished and inhaling is the moment Loki will remember as the detonation.

Loki’s scarily tiny next to Thor and choking on the rush of _mine_ and loving it and oh my god he might a puddle on the sidewalk.

Thor’s smile goes really sharp and zaps from his eyes and his fist pulls back to his side which sets off a chain of muscles flexing in his arm and chest. “So, you’re Bucky?”

“I am,” says Bucky who’s clearly suicidal with how unbothered he looks. “He wanted to draw me like one of his French boys.” Please stop talking and not the lip bite. “I humored him.”

Thor isn’t smiling anymore. At all. It’s terribly sexy.

“Knew Barnes was storing his missiles in your Cuba, Loki.” And that’s of course what Stark chooses to leave the blast radius with.

Steve’s friend Dum Dum is Bucky’s—and Loki’s—guardian angel with a huge arm around Bucky’s shoulders and beer he shouts is to “get the night rolling” that Bucky flicks open so its foaming over his hand and the ground and takes a drink of while still somehow keeping eye contact with Thor, and Dum Dum’s leading Bucky away from them and away from Thor.  

Loki tries futilely to wipe some of the hot sticky tension off his neck, and says hoping to diffuse the stare down aimed at Bucky’s back, “I hope they’re ready to say it’s a costume prop,” which only accomplishes getting Thor giving him that one I’m-disappointed-in-this-thing-you’re-never-going-to-do-again look that looks brotherly from the outside but couldn’t farther from it. “Bucky’s—he has sketch-able features. I couldn’t pass it up. And he likes Sufjan Stevens who you say is a ‘whiny omega bitchboy.’ We have things in common.”

And why is he explaining himself to the guy who has a long-term girlfriend?    

“You let that fuck, fuck you?” Thor all but spits at Loki.

“Why’s that your main concern when I just told you I might’ve just formed an emotional connection with him?”

“Are you shitting me? Him? He’s—he’s barely six foot, looks like he belongs in a shitty punk band, and like I told you, he fucking reeks—“

“And like I told you, he doesn’t smell that bad.”

Thor stops talking, which would be good any other time, but now it means Thor’s thinking, contemplating and when Thor thinks, bad things usually happen to Loki. Bad as in sweaty-pleading-screaming things. “I broke up with Amora.”

Someone shouts for them to come on since the crowd’s started moving again.

Loki’s heart takes a few more seconds though. “What? Why would you, why would do that?”

“Because I don’t love her, and I don’t want to be with _her_.”

Again with shouting at them, except with more expletives that get what sounds like Steve yelling about kids and bad language. Loki would roll his eyes and move on any other time, but it’s an out from the uncomfortable whatever hanging in the sliver of air between him and Thor, so he unsticks his thighs and starts walking.

Thor easily keeps pace. “Aren’t you supposed to be happy? I’m no longer… disrespecting our bond like Mom says.”

 _Thor’s_ mom and she doesn’t say that about them, but about other people in that homogenous quaint place Loki’s never going back to.

“You don’t like that fucking—?“

“It’s not about him.” He cuts off that diatribe. “What are you expecting to happen? Me to just, I don’t know, run into your arms and off into the sunset? If you remember, we’re brothers to the rest of the world, which your—“

“—our—”

 “—parents never accounted for buying me to be your mate.” He kind of enjoys Thor’s half eye roll. “You’re sort of nationally famous and going to be until you succumb to amassed traumatic brain injuries. Little America isn’t going to be happy the second coming of Joe Montana is fucking his brother.”

And just to prove Loki’s point a group of mouth-breathing preteens all dressed as Walter White scampers up to Thor wanting autographs and selfies and answers of why he hasn’t dropped out of college and gone pro like all the impulsive zombies before him.

Loki lays the see-what-I-was-saying look on Thor nice and thick, but Thor crowds in close and manhandles him in that way Loki totally doesn’t not like it all despite the complaints about his personal agency and puts an arm around his waist in a not-so-brotherly way. He shudders at the warm breath in his ear.

“I’m the alpha. You should let me do more of the thinking and the worrying, alright? And you’re too beautiful for that.” _That_ word. “Just relax.” The arm not around Loki lifts to meet some dudebro for a high five. “It’s not like I’m going to molest you in public.”

He’s mastering the mildly scandalized face—until Thor squeezes his ass so hard his fingertips almost touch. And Thor doesn’t let go.

Loki figures he should be sort of jealous when Bucky flirts with some pin-up girl omega since they were supposedly _something_ hours ago, but he’s too anxious about this tentative agreement he and Thor have to do anything but munch the M &M’s Thor buys him and not think too hard about the possessive hand on his ass.

 


	45. Chapter 45

## **

“I won’t kick the shit out of that guy I’m totally not threatened by, no way, Jose, if you treat him like a complete stranger aka shit,” is pretty much message of Thor’s post-orgasm rant. And by not molesting Loki in public, Thor actually meant not molesting Loki where other people can see since the ritzy bathroom of the cabaret club’s Stark’s sweet-talked them all into falls under the definition of public.

Alpha Thor’s obviously trying to set a precedent for all the pouty, smoldering alphas Loki gets the itch to sketch naked which annoys him in the serious-dedicated-artist way, but there are other, animalistic ways like the one keeping him calm about the cum drying on the inside of his robes, because Thor’s an ejaculation fountain and Loki only has so much space inside, that secretly _preen_.

It’s so primitive Loki feels sort of helpless about the whole thing and maybe terrified about how okay he is about _that_ since his last try at letting Thor take the reins ended with that fight about ESU and Loki not following Thor there and Thor’s parents stepping in with that stuff about being “more important to each other than brothers.” And that ended so well.

So, no, it’s not easy letting Thor do the thinking, but he wants to for some reason.

“You’re the one who’s going to explain Natasha the reason for the supervised visits because I’m not just going to find another muse out of thin air,” Loki says, trying to look as put off as possible, which is way harder than it should be with the Maleficent headdress on, and Thor tightens his hands on Loki’s pretty much numb hips and says with one his appropriated Loki eye rolls, “That’s not too bad.”

There’s a knock on the door, bang technically, and a voice that unmistakably Barton’s shouting, “Pregnant person needing to pee here!”

Barton sniffs and asks why it smells like sex, and Thor just shrugs and says it’s probably the pregnancy hormones which Loki sagely nods at.

 


	46. 46

## **

Thor just _so_ like totally causally suggests to Natasha that hey, babysitting his “boy—brother” (which might’ve been an immature jab hours ago when Loki still had the costume on that blurred the fine gender lines between male and female omegas but now that he’s definitely not eavesdropping on the couch in his pajamas, not so much) would be good practice for her and Barton’s baby, and what does Natasha do instead of address the big pseudo-incestuous elephant?

That massive garbage bag of candy Barton threw a hissy fit over when Steve suggested he take it and give it to the little boys and girls he draws with at the after-school program he of course volunteers for, Natasha lifts it one-handed and chucks it at Thor. “Get rid of it. If he asks, your frat huffed every last piece of it down. Understood?”

“Deal.”

And that’s how Thor gets his way.

Before having his way. Not that Loki has any objections about that since he gets head out of being as compliant as he can be about Thor’s alpha insecurities.


	47. 47

## **

Thor knows how easily Loki bruises. It used to be his go-to excuse for why Loki shouldn’t do X or why he should be careful doing Y _better yet I can just come with you Loki_.

There’s a purple-red handprint on his ass from how tight Thor was holding him because clothes have never been a match for Thor’s might--among the other bruises on his body, and it stings already at the slightest touch, which makes sitting a complete bitch.

Thor knows that too, having the nerve to laugh when Loki shifts five minutes into lecture to sit his right leg to ease the pressure, and Loki should find it ugly and irritating, but it’s… nice. In that same flavor as him getting lost in Thor’s—everything when they’re walking around the city to pass the time between classes, which is endless for Thor, Mr. Two Classes This Term, it’s maudlin but nice.  

(When he gets the urge and Thor’s throwing, catching, and/or hitting balls, he touches it while he fucks himself with his fingers and cums so fucking hard.)


	48. 48

## **

“When were you gonna tell me that you and Banner played bun the hot dog?”

If it wasn’t for the safety goggles, the suction of the microscope would’ve yanked Loki’s eye it with how hard he pulls away. He never, _never_ lets Tony’s broken shit to mouth filter bother him in the lab, but.

“Tell me I didn’t hear you right.”

Tony gives up all pretense of work on his side of the table like he’s the one being harassed. “Save it for the Disciplinary Committee. Which hey, I haven’t said anything to and don’t have any plans to, so calm your perky ass. Well, maybe, since you offered it up to the guy who own more than one pair of corduroys before me.”

Loki isn’t sure, for a second, what Tony wants out of this, and for Loki, not knowing people’s motivations is like, it’s like Thor not knowing how to be stupid and loud and strong. Then he’s left with one eyebrow up and the other scrunched because Tony looks annoyed. No, betrayed. This isn’t some case of jealousy either because Tony has his dick shoved so far up Jarvis’ ass it’s surprising the guy isn’t choking on it.    

“Here I was telling you about the skeletons in my backyard thinking you were returning the favor, but what do I know about this stuff?” He’s talking more to himself at this point, but the lab’s a quiet zone and usually kept that way except, well, when he’s here. “I was a loner when I was a kid.”

“Shut up.” Loki looks back into the microscope, back at the stained slide, but he’s not observing anymore. “If I had played… ‘bun the hot dog’ or whatever you said with him, I wouldn’t have told you because if I’d done that, I wouldn’t risk his career. Even though you might not have told, I would’ve had to live with the guilt of even the chance of you telling. If I’d done that.”

“If he’d have stroked his rod in you piston.”

Loki tried to suppress the immature smile. “Right.”

“Since I missed out on the opportunity to sneak in as many innuendos to student favoritism, you owe me all the dirty details about your next slip & slide rider. Especially since you’re single now that you and Barnes fizzled out. His fault. Should’ve went with a bigger gun. Omegas dig that.”  

Given who that was, well, that wasn’t going to happen. Ever. But Loki played along because that’s what friends do.


	49. 49

## **

Frigga texts him. _‘I’m happy you’re setting aside your differences. I love you.’_

He doesn’t delete it.


	50. 50

## **

Thor sometimes comes in at the end of Loki’s shifts—which aren’t regular but always fall around his classes and internship, something that requires too much math for Thor to do because he’s not getting a grade out of it, so Brock is clearly feeding him information under the table because Thor has an in on the college football brackets or something—and orders hot chocolate, 3 tbsps. of Truvia, skim milk, extra marshmallows—“That isn’t an option, Thor.” “Loki, come on”—and sits at the stool behind the counter intended for employee use only but Brock hasn’t said anything except yet, “Big Odie, my man,” further confirming Loki’s theory.

He talks about things that Loki doesn’t really care about, football, soccer, wrestling-related things, and about things that Loki wouldn’t care about if Thor didn’t have such ridiculous opinions on them—“Britney Spears is a puppet, Thor. She’s literally mentally ill.” “Then the people with the strings need to make her better music”—and occasionally about non-ridiculous, non-stupid things Loki deigns with replies between customers.

And Thor asks him about his day whether it’s a noon shift or at 8:00, and Loki doesn’t feel narcissistic or like he’s exposing himself when he answers. Thor’s irritating and a lot of other things most of the time, but he’s Loki’s brother, and Loki knows him.

Afterward, Thor walks him to his next class or to the metro where he goes down with Loki and waits with him or to Loki’s apartment, and whenever Loki’s gotten to where he needed to go, Thor presses a kiss to Loki’s cheek that they both know is meant for Loki’s lips.

But if it’s dark enough and there are no people around that might recognize the Thunder God, then Thor kisses him, long and slow, until he’s breathless and on the tips of his toes inside his shoes, chasing every last space inside Thor’s mouth so he can claim it, claim _him_.

Loki always hates himself for getting his hopes higher and higher because there’s no way this is going to end good for him.


	51. 51

## **

He and Barton are watching _Tomorrow Never Dies_ as Natasha flips through the restaurant guide Barton’s parents sent him after they made a surprise visit in the middle of Loki’s freshman year and decided that Barton’s obsession with greasy dollar pizza out of seedy hole-in-the-wall places downtown was as unhealthy as Loki and Natasha told him it was and reads them out loud for Barton to say, “Nope, too ‘insert ridiculous reason X he used even before pregnancy.’”

There’s a knock at the door, and neither Barton nor Natasha move to get it or suddenly remember they invited someone over and shout it at Loki’s back.

He’ll consider the little dip his heart does when inhaling doesn’t make his head swim relief instead of disappointment. It’s not like Thor doesn’t have a huge life outside of Loki with other people, fawning, pretty people.

Like Amora who’s standing in the doorway. Except in a comparative sense now that Thor’s broken up with her. It shows in small ways people too hypnotized by her cleavage won’t notice, but anyone with a nose can just sniff the fuck-this coming off her.

“Are you going to invite me in or--?”

“Come in,” he says, swinging the door open with a kind of mocking enthusiasm he knows she couldn’t muster if she tried given the eyelash glue and hairspray that’s holding her together. “I’m guessing Thor told you where I lived?”

Amora steps out her stiletto booties which not only gives her a plus one in Loki’s book but puts her a few inches shorter than him. She gives Loki this sharp look, the closest thing to an answer he’s going to get, and spontaneously decides to acquaint herself with Loki’s—and Natasha’s, who materializes at the end of the hall and puts that on pause, apartment. “And you are..?”

“Romanoff.” And there goes the dainty hand that has no business being that threatening. “Natasha.”

Barton shouts something about Natasha grabbing him pita chips, which she actually already has, while she’s up. He doesn’t have Loki’s vantage point of what Loki hopes won’t become an alpha gladiator fight in their front hallway and has faith won’t become when Amora shakes Natasha’s hand even if it’s passive aggressive.

“She’s the gymnast who won all those gold medals in Beijing,” Amora says when Natasha’s virtually out of earshot but Loki keeps an eye on the kitchen doorway. She sits down _in Loki’s chair_ in a regal way. “Thor broke up with me Halloween. You should’ve seen me.” A mean smile in Ravish Me red. “I looked like a goddess. He doesn’t even compliment me and tells me that he’s sorry for wasting my time but we’re not working out. I knew that was a lie. So, I refused to let him walk away until he told me the truth.”

She’s expecting Loki to cower under her stare, but he crosses his arms and hopes she gets over the suspense.

With how calm Thor was that night, it’s not that truth he told her.

“He fucked my sister.” It’s mockingly cheerful, and her eyes are hurt. “Lorelei, my little sister. She’s a sophomore on the cheerleading squad like I am. You probably know her. That pretty red hair. An omega,” she says, and Loki’s almost sure he hasn’t heard her right until the word rubberbands in his head and her voice’s replaying.

He suddenly feels kinship with her and her righteous anger. An omega? Thor, he was with another omega?

“I’ve forgiven her. She always had a crush on him like everyone else, and she’s my sister. He’s the alpha all of the omegas dream of, and he had to have her.” Amora stops looking at her sparkly green nails and up at him. “He thinks he can get away with this, that he can hurt me—us and walk away with no consequences. Your brother is more a stupid man that I gave him credit for.”

He realizes belatedly that she’s trying to rope him into a revenge plot the seething omega part of him roots on but. “It’s not like she was the only one,” he’s saying, sure of what he’s implying then not after it’s left his mouth.

Amora makes an ugly noise. “Lorelei is my sister. You’re not close to Thor. I can’t expect you to understand that bond.”

Try him.

He turns around to grab something from the fridge, taking his sweet time.

“He feels sorry for you, you know. With how your parents lied to you about being adopted,” and Loki’s just sitting there half in the fridge, letting out the cold out like he’d yell at Barton for, “he thinks you need good family. Since yours didn’t want you for being an omega which is so backwards. That’s why he’s spending all this time with you before he leaves. He has a bad conscience about all the selfish shit he’s done that he’s trying to make up for it.”

He has to wrench his fingers open from fists to grab water. The warm air is so much like a slap in the face that he’s sure Amora’s backhanded him, but she’s instead hovering annoyingly close, filling his nose with _pityangerbetrayal_.

She looks so jarringly flawless Loki’s stricken by something he can handle, something comfortable.

“Would you mind if I sketched you?”

Even with all of her clothes on, Loki feels like she’s nude. They both are.


	52. 52

## **

 _‘Amora wants revenge for you fucking her sister’_ is what the inside of the balled up note Loki drops in Thor’s lap.

Texting felt too impersonal, and Loki wanted to see or at least smell the incredulity or whatever emotion Thor decides to respond to something as damning as that with. It is incredulity with a mixture of that pulse-revving anger and some, shockingly, panic.

As interesting as it is after not smelling it since that time with the bike and rain, it’s also an indictment for that maybe to be a definitely. Amora might be shrewd and manipulative, but she’s not a liar, not like Loki.

Bruce shuffles into the lecture hall with as dry a good morning as ever. Loki has to wonder what he would think about all of this because none of his “I told you so” lectures would cut it. 

There’s an impatient breath against his neck and a note dropping onto his thigh after Bruce’s topic introduction. Thor’s handwriting, pen pushed so hard into the paper there are tears, echoes the feeling. _‘She had no fucking business telling you that or bothering you. She was mad about it when I tried to break up with her and tried to make me stay with her because she ‘let it pass.’ But it was last year and it didn’t mean anything. I was having a rough time staying away from you, so I tried to distract myself. It was wrong. I know. I should’ve told her but I didn’t want to hurt her any more than I did. I’ll get her to leave you alone.’_

Scratch the not a liar thing. Except on a bigger scale, Amora lying about how she found out Thor fucked her sister is inconsequential compared to Thor fucking her sister how many times? And he’s going to try to blame Loki?

 _‘Hey, you’re almost there taking responsibility for the problems you not me caused. I never said anything about getting her to stay away from me. She could become my new muse. Maybe then I won’t need my roommate to babysit me while I’m drawing someone. But then again, if I was her, I would try to fuck me to get back at you. Fair is fair.’ _  

“Loki.”

His fingers never open to release the note over his shoulder since Bruce would probably see now that he’s watching Loki.

But he’s probably already seen. No, definitely.

“I’d appreciate it if you and Mr. Odinson could stop passing notes and instead take some,” Bruce says, cuing dozens of necks cracking and craning to look at them. Thank you, Bruce. “Better yet, I think it will save us a lot of future problems if you … move now.”

Loki slides the note into his pocket.

“It’s just a note,” Thor says.

“You say that now, but it’s not. It’s the beginning of a lot of notes and distractions. And as someone who wants to see you succeed, I’d rather nip this thing in a bud before it gets out of hand.” He then holds open his hands in that soothing kind of way. “You’re both adults, who I hope understand what I’m saying. Loki, Mr. Odinson, whichever one of you volunteers doesn’t matter.”

As always, Loki has to be the big not-brother.

When he moves to stand though Thor grabs his shoulder with one of those disbelieving, “Loki”s.

“It’s fine,” he says. “He’s right.”

He’s walking away when Bruce says his name and holds out a hand, and Loki’s feeling a lot less like the adult Bruce said he was a few moments ago and that day in his office, acting like he’s fishing the ball out of his pocket. But Loki comes up short and shrugs because it was a small ball anyway, and Bruce has already made any point he was trying to and knows how far to push Loki, so he drops his empty hand.

He finds the seat that mirrors his old one except in the row furthest back, so Thor can’t turn around and look at him without the people secretly admiring him noticing and Bruce can’t stare at him while he alludes to the conversation that took place that day.


	53. 53

## **

Bucky’s ethics course gets out 20 minutes after Heat 101, so Loki’s gnawing on a pen over finished discrete math homework outside the lecture hall when he hears that unmistakable cocky-coated Brooklyn drawl. 

One of those guys from Halloween, Dum Dum, the Scottish one, notices Loki before Bucky, and there’s an embarrassingly awkward wave on Loki’s end as Bucky says bye to yet another person, and Loki’s left clutching onto his satchel strap for dear life, trying to nonchalant but definitely coming off as, well, desperate.

Bucky sees hi, and looks… confused, confused and surprised… in a good way. “I thought you, me, and Romanoff didn’t have our appointment till tomorrow night.”

The hallway’s empty except for the two of them. They’re alone in every sense of the word. Like Thor told Loki they couldn’t be. That was before Loki knew Thor gave himself to god or whatever the hell is out there knows how many omegas.  

“About that. No one except Barton wants Natasha to see the most vulnerable parts of their body, so as far me sketching you—all of you, I don’t think this arrangement’s going to work,” Loki says. “Halloween, I—“

There are lips covering his, one of those static, breath-stealing kisses. Bucky’s lips.

Unfortunately.

“Should I have did that?” Bucky asks right against his lips, and Loki stares at the tops of his sneakers for refuge.

“I was going to explain Halloween night, how Thor was acting. He’s not actually my brother. He’s… he’s my mate.”

All and any sexiness between them, it’s gone.

“You’re shitting me?”

Loki’s expression does the talking since Bucky puts space between the two of them to be appalled in a way that’s all wide eyes—as wide as eyes slack as his can go. It’s comical, so opposite of how Loki’s seen him that the absurdity of the situation isn’t so much nerve-wracking as it is exasperating.

“Then I shouldn’t have done that, huh? No wonder guy looked like he wanted to kill me. Couldn’t have told me before I got hard for you?”

“It’s complicated,” he says. “With you, it wasn’t.”

Half of Bucky’s mouth smiles. “How about you buy lunch, and then I take you back to my place to draw me? All clothes on maybe besides the shirt. Nothing too sexy about that.”

They’re walking, the space between them small enough that it’s swallowed up by Bucky’s wide-legged sauntering so their shoulders brush, but. It’s just that. Fabric against fabric.

“Fine.”

Loki gets Bucky down to his boxers too (he bargains with a vanilla malt, Bucky’s weakness) but doesn’t mention the boner.


	54. 54

## **

“I can’t believe you. I swear you do things to spite me.”

He smells of Bucky no doubt. Bucky’s apartment smelled of Bucky, so unless Loki wanted to stand there the whole time, he had to sit down. Which he does on his own bed in spite of any second-hand scent that rubs off. It is, after all, and despite it always smelling of Thor, his own bed.

“Complain later. He knows.”

“That I’m going to cave his fucking face in?”

“That you’re my mate, dumbass,” he whispers through his teeth. The walls aren’t thin, but Natasha has superhuman hearing. And he refuses to indulge her suspicions.  

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Happy now?”

“No.” Thor doesn’t have his varsity jacket on. Just his red and white baseball tee rolled up to his elbows to show off the faint veins under the practically golden skin _his_ parents gave him and the blond hair that they did too. “You ditched me in class earlier.”

“I wasn’t in the mood to hear your excuses. Sorry.” Not sorry. He’s rolled over onto his back, leaned on his elbow like a centerspread in Urban Outfitters with way more clothes and no Freudian fetish-bait. No, his whole life is a Freudian dream. “I was thinking of ways you could make it up to me. Blood vow, or there’s a Melike Kara show next Saturday where you can buy me a few prints. Or—“

“I don’t do either.” Thor straddles him, so Loki’s boxed in. A lock of his hair’s tickling Loki’s ear because Thor wouldn’t dare make a neat bun. Ever.

The prospect of Thor kissing him like, like Bucky did, it gets him licking his lips a little.

“Or you do both,” he says. “And you still get to fuck me.”

“That’s it? When did you become so generous?”

Loki hits him on the shoulder, that “Ow” Thor being a dick because he’s got bulletproof skin to go along with the titanium arms, but Loki kisses him too which cancels it out.  


	55. 55

## **

An entire 50 minutes of Pietro “Mr. STEM Master Race” complaining about art being lazy while slashing his charcoal down to a nub with his “kinetic drawings” of stick figures chased by motion lines all due to him being pissy about Wanda taking a sick day makes Steve’s “Have a good day” so much more gratifying.

As long as a Wanda-less Pietro’s not around, fuck will Loki have a great day.

“Hey, man,” is shouted in his general direction, and there are footsteps jogging, but given there’s no “chocolate couture” preceding it, Loki keeps going. Until there’s another, “Hey,” and Loki realizes: Sam.

Sam slows in front of him, not really urgent but not relaxed either. “You got somewhere to be? I don’t mean to keep you.”

“No. I’m just trying to put as much space between me and Pietro Maximoff, but he’s already sprinted the other way. I’m guessing Thor put you up to whatever this is.”

“Uh, nah. No. It’s not like that,” Sam says. “Just wanted to let you know that I’m in your corner. I can’t fathom how hard it’s been for you having to sacrifice part of yourself because of people’s expectations, but I do know what it’s like trying to change people’s minds.” He pats Loki’s arm in that platonically, uber-masculine “bro” way. “Ever need me to kick some close-minded ass, you know where I live. Alright?”

Sam doesn’t linger for a nod or anything, leaving Loki to stare after him.

Steve’s so obviously waiting for him at the end of the hall like he’s not screwing him, embracing the taboo like only an optimist could.

An optimist like Thor.

Thor told Sam.

Thor told Sam?  

Thor _told_ Sam.

Despite his alpha arrogance, getting back at Loki for telling Bucky would’ve been one of the last motivators of chucking, “By the way, Sam, I’m fucking my brother who’s not really my brother but my mate,” at the person he shares space and all that totally important frat boy wisdom with. No. Thor was being plain _fucking dumb._

Out of principle of recovering what’s left of his day and not stooping down to Thor’s “scent stalking” level, Loki takes advantage of his 100% employee discount down at the coffee shop to drown his sorrows in pumpkin spice latte while Brock complains to him about Steve, who lives in his building, and must be the reason Loki looks like a “kicked kitty cat, that walking-stick-in ass bastard.”

“Could I talk you in to taking the closing shift?” Brock’s asking, entranced with his phone like all those passersby over his head. 

Almost all.

It’s rare to see Thor coming before smelling him, but Eau de Traitor/SexGod/Asshole is on its way to giving Loki a headache the moment the door cracks open. For Brock though, it’s a warning to get the hell up and go bro-clap-handshake-thing Thor up before he changes his mind about not just giving him the inside scoop on football but killing him for being Brock Rumlow, douchebag incarnate.

If Brock wouldn’t have endlessly teased him about being “collared,” Loki would think Thor told him too.

Loki gets a mouthful of whipped cream when Thor says, “Hey,” all casually as he sits down. Loki’s “Hey to you too” sounds like a sloppy, muffled mess, but Thor and his stupid cocked eyebrow get the point.

“Your phone’s off.”

“I know.”

“Someone blowing you up?”

It’d been a matter of “not yet” when he turned it off, but Loki shrugs.

“What’s wrong?”

“You.”

Thor doesn’t even blink. Immunity to Loki’s crazy comes with 19 years of knowing each other, no small feat since that 19 years is his entire life, one of the only benefits of growing up as brothers besides 2 am blow jobs without any stones to windows or climbing trees.

“I get it. It must really ruffle your ego that you can’t show off your prized biological possession. You’re the quintessential alpha male, and to imagine, you can’t show that you’ve done the quintessential alpha male thing and heeled an omega. It must’ve been killing you.”

That nelly guitar of “A-Punk” can’t melt Loki any more than Thor’s deliberately blank stare hasn’t.

“Telling Sam, that makes sense too. He’s cool. But everyone’s cool until they realize their roommate has been fucking the boy raised as his brother. There’s a whole new ethical dilemma attached to that.”

“Not if I tell everyone we’ve actually been mates the whole time.” Thor leans forward, consuming most of that forearm-length of space between them with his inter-clenched fists, his arms in that varsity jacket. Loki focuses on how his fingertips would barely touched wrapped around them instead of how squinty Thor’s eyes are, that interplay of sunshine and freshwater that’d be so easy to lose himself and his resolve in. “Ever since I remember, Loki, you’ve been… a part of me. I’ve never felt ‘brotherly’ toward you. Neither have you.   

“When we get married, everyone’s going to know about us. Or have kids. Whatever comes first. It could be my conscience talking, but dropping it on them before then seems like a good idea.” 

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Like what? Like I’m thinking about our future?”

“Like it’s that easy.” Loki takes a few breaths. “I accepted that this wasn’t going to happen, and you expect me to just… pretend that I didn’t spend the last three years of my life coming to terms with the fact that I was going to always be alone even if I was with someone.”

When Thor touches him, his hands holding his, it feels… full.

“I’m such a piece of shit, I know. What I did—letting you go like that, I’m sorry. God, Loki, I’m so sorry. I put myself first when I should’ve put us first. Look at how great that turned out. I’ve been fucking miserable without you.” Thor laughs, rubbing rough circles on the back of Loki’s thumbs.

Loki can’t go in circles. Not again.

Retracting his hands, he grabs his jacket and his bag and summoning some bullshit excuse, he says, “I have a shit ton of homework, so don’t come over tonight,” and he leaves Thor alone at the table with an empty cup.


	56. 56

## **

_Thor:_

_Wednesday 11:02 pm_

_‘I love you Lo’_


End file.
